“Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual.”

A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.

But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.

If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.

A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be?

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is.

Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.

Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.

The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth.

Long for what is real. You will then have no time for worrying over what may never happen.

There’s a real difference between a documentary that was all about facts and history and information.

Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.

All will surely realize God. All will be liberated. It may be that some get their meal in the morning, some at noon, and some in the evening; but none will go without food.

It’s enough to have faith in one aspect of God. You have faith in God without form.

God alone is real, nothing matters but love for God.

God alone is real, and all else is illusion.

A devotee who can call on God while living a householder’s life is a hero indeed. God thinks: ‘He is blessed indeed who prays to me in the midst of his worldly duties.