Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts.

It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.

We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

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.

Technical Utopias-flying, for example-have been achieved by the new science of nature.The human utopia...a united new humankind living in solidarity and peace, free from economic determination and from war and class struggle-can be achieved, provided we spend the same energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm on the realization of the human Utopia as we have spent on the realization of our technical Utopias.

Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

I think, to be specific, we got off the track when we concentrated more and more on production of things. Thereby, we created a split between intellect and emotion, because, in order to produce a modern technique, you have to use intellect, and we have created men who are very brilliant, who are very clever, but our emotional life has become impoverished.