A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.

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