“I have a premonition that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.”

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life.

Language was invented to ask questions.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

Our attitude towards plants is a singularly narrow one. If we see any immediate utility in a plant we foster it. If for any reason we find its presence undesirable or merely a matter of indifference, we may condemn it to destruction forthwith.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction.

The poor suffer twice at the rioter’s hands. First, his destructive fury scars their neighborhood; second, the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment.

There is no surer road to destruction than prosperity without character.