A person’s creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.
We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact.
This food-and-shelter theory concerning man’s efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.
The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them.
A man’s worth is what he is divided by what he thinks he is.
You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.
Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.
If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart.
The conservatism of a religion – it’s orthodoxy – is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
Successful action tends to become an end in itself.
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.
The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.
All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.
There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.