“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.”

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.

Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one’s total orientation to life.

This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

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)

When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.

Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

From now on, I’ll connect the dots my own way.

With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible.

All art is based on non-conformity.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly

Resisting conformity and developing some small eccentricities are among the steps to independence and self-confidence.

Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity

In ourselves we harbor the intuition of another evolution, of other possibilities of life.

I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel.