The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Everyone has a need for significance; and if we can't make that possible, or even probable, in our society, then it will be obtained in destructive ways.

All our feelings, like the artist's paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.

Mass communication--wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued--presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)

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.

Forge in the smithy of your soul.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.