People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
