The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.

What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.