An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.
No one has a right to happiness.
They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.
The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.
A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.
It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice – that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt – are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.
You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone.
Resistance, whether to one’s appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.
The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.
People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.