We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.

...That genius is a rare exception (:) It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out.