“A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind.”

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The trouble with fiction,” said John Rivers, “is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything

The goal in life is to discover that you’ve always been where you were supposed to be.

The more you know, the more you see

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education.

When the sun rises, it rises for everyone.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom.

Don’t try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We’re all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat – and the boat is perpetually sinking.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.