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.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more

The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.

To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before read more

To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

A man is but what he knows.

A man is but what he knows.

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.