Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.

Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe.

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.

The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.

Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.