The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: '[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion.' The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.

Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment - an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to …

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.