If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.

It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.