Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, read more

Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others- and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch.

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the read more

...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant read more

There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a read more

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a "safe" code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you.

A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted read more

A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.

Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.