In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue.

Today it is not alive. What, then, is this experience of humanism? With the above survey I have tried to show you that the experience of humanism is that — as Terence expressed it — “Nothing human is alien to me”; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and I am the saint. I am the child and I am the adult. I am the man who lived a hundred thousand years ago and I am the man who, provided we don't destroy the human race, will live hundred thousand years from now.

Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?..Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?

Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness.

Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.

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

An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.