What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there’s the real danger.

Love is not a mood, but a dynamic way of being.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.

It's easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.

The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.