“Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.”

That is the truth about man – that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don’t understand.

The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.

The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.

It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.

Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.

The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.

If I had ever really ‘faced the facts’ about myself, I never would have reached for even a zillionth of what I’ve managed to accomplish.

Facts’ are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

That’s why I always recommend a psychedelic experience because it makes you realize that all you’ve learned is in fact just learned and not necessarily the truth.

I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.

Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself.

I am also a writer. That is a fact not known by the public in general.

Especially in recent years, the more and more we understand what we are doing, the more we have the science to tell us what we’re doing, the fact that we continue to do it without taking steps to address it strikes me as, among many other things, irreverent in an extreme.

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.