There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.

Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.

There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.