That is the trouble, everybody is giving everything in the world a piece of their minds. Whereas what we want is not a piece of somebody's mind, even the best mind, so much as an open heart and an open spirit.

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.

I suspect it was...the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences.

In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a child of darkness who is equal and complementary to the more obvious child of light.

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

Creativity and love come from the same source.

You may well be right, and disaster may well come, I had told him. But for me it will always be a point of honour to go on working to prevent disaster, if only to make certain it is the right kind of disaster life needs when it does ultimately come.