There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, read more

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, and indifferent. But a rational life, the life of a valuer, does not consist essentially in reaction. It consists in action. Man does not find his values, like the other animals; he creates them. The primary focus of a valuer is not to take the world as it comes and pass judgment. His primary focus is to identify what might and ought to exist, to uncover potentialities that he can exploit, to find ways of reshaping the world in the image of his values.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine read more

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.

The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays read more

The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to read more

The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.