Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.

Politics and religious leaders [are hindered] by their egotism.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.

If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in the love either.

Finally one arrives at this: the state of sleep has an ambiguous function; in sleep, the lack of contact with the culture brings out the worst and also the best in us.

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.