Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.

Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we couldn't make them out; bad seemed to lead to good, and good motives led to bad. The paradox is that evil comes from man's urge to heroic victory over evil.

Guilt results from unused life, from the unlived in us.

The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.

Men use one another to assure their personal victory over death.