“Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in “Jurgen” that “to do what you always have done” and “what is expected of you” are the twin rules of life.”

This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis.

We need a way of life in which the animal, guided by reason, may romp but will not bite.

The more ignorant the authority, the more dogmatic it is. In the fields where no real knowledge is even possible, the authorities are the fiercest and most assured and punish non-belief with the severest of penalties.

Great men have been characterized by the greatness of their mistakes as well as by the greatness of their achievements.

Man uses his intelligence less in the care of his own species than he does in his care of anything else he owns or governs.

Kids have what I call a built-in hypocrisy antenna that comes up and blocks out what you’re saying when you’re being a hypocrite.

The obstacles in our path are not blocking us-they are redirecting us. Their purpose is not to interfere with our happiness; it is to point us toward new routes to our happiness, new possibilities, new doorways.

You try to become the character that you’re working with. So for me, I try to block out the cameras and try to trick my mind that this is actually happening.

the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!

In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person’s development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.