The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.