Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.

There is a radicalism in all getting, and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.

To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

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

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.