Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They read more

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true read more

Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.

It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands read more

It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his read more

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.

The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.