In the last analysis the entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.

One must learn to give up momentary, uncertain and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but dependable pleasure.

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.

Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis.

The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

When we attempt to imagine death, we perceive ourselves as spectators.