A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice.

Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence.

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.

If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images.