If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
...Today the lack of faith is an expression of profound confusion and despair. Once skepticism and rationalism were progressive forces for the development of thought; now they have become rationalizations for relativism and uncertainty.
There is nothing sadder in this world than the waste of human potential. The purpose of evolution is to raise us out of the mud, not have us grovelling in it
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.
...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.
Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.
...action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.
They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?
People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.
All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means.
He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.
Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.
Cuando una creencia se transforma en algo más que un instrumento, estás perdido. Permanecerás perdido hasta que aprendas para qué es realmente la ‘creencia’.
When enough insane people scream in harmony that they really are healthy, they can actually start to believe themselves. Or put even more simply: people with overlapping delusions get along wonderfully.
A man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house.
Psychological motivation is the desire to change relations between two points, and so psychology is the study of equations with two unbound variables. ("America: Three Audiences")
For me, a big part of writing psychological thrillers is choosing crimes committed for motives which would only apply to a particular person in a particular situation; a unique, one-off motive that is born out of someone's particular range of psychol...
