I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.

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

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.

One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.

[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep.