I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know.
I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
The profoundest distances are never geographical.
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love. " They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.
[A] republic. . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law. . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose.
Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity.
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.