“Alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure.”

When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.

The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.

True thinking is rare – just like true listening.

It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city.

To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value.

That’s poetic in its malevolence.

Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

What you aim at determines what you see.

Worthlessness is the default condition.

Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality. We do that with every choice we make. Our choices determine the destiny of the world. By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality.

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.

It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

How many things… are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?

The science of anti-Semitism has as its object Judaism as a social problem, being thus, necessarily, the synthesis of all sciences that can contribute to its solution.

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they’re both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

Modest fame is not to be despised by the highest characters. [Lat., Modestiae fama neque summis mortalibus spernenda est.]

Philosophy bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.

The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.