Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

... what the artist or creative scientist feels is not anxiety or fear; it is joy. I use the word in contrast to happiness or pleasure. The artist, at the moment of creating, does not experience gratification or satisfaction... Rather, it is joy, joy defined as the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one's own potentialities.

Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)