Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

A man by himself is in bad company.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

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

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever ills he suffers, has a child to love.

Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.