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.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.

Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them.

Integrity simply means not violating one's own identity.

A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.