Authority is not a quality one person 'has,' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love; this act transcends thought, it transcends words. It is the daring plunge into the experience of union. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling-it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it.

The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness