The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.

If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences,that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, i perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood. This relatedness from center to center - instead of that from periphery to periphery - is 'central relatedness'.

Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.

Love is a power which produces love.

Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect. If it isn't productive and respectful, it isn't love, but only fear masquerading as love.

I think if you ask what people really mean by happiness today, it is the experience of unlimited consumption - the kind of thing Mr. Huxley described in "Brave New World."

The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own