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

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.

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

I feel worried, deeply worried, only about one thing - the possibility that we fall... that we cannot avoid an atomic war.

People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love?

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.

We try to evade the question of existence with property, prestige, power, possession, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we- that I- exist. No matter how much he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas , if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God.