“The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e. only from outside the person.”

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves.

When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

We may define therapy as a search for value.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized but strive to be worthy of recognition.

What one can be, one must be!

The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.

Appreciate again and again, freshly and naively the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stable these experiences may have become to others.

Most people experience both tragedy and joy in varying proportions. Any philosophy which leaves out either cannot be considered to be comprehensive.

People are not evil; they are schlemiels.

False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.

The most stable, and therefore, the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

Every person is, in part, his own project and makes himself.

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to you. And Stay.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

I don’t belong to anyone, but everybody knows my name.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Get back to where you once belonged.

Love and work are the only two real things in our lives. They belong together, otherwise it is off. Work is in itself a form of love.