“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

“Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

“I'm moving and not moving at all. I'm like the moon underneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking. It is not, "I am doing this," but rather, an inner realization that "this is happening through me," or "it is doing this for me." The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.”

“ASK any wise man what he most desires and he will, more than likely, say "more wisdom.”

“You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.”

“For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes will not often be a bodily one like hunting or fighting. It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? - Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?" The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.”

“If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.”

“A conditioned mind is never a free mind.”

“[Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man.”

“For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.”

“All pain is the same.” 

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

“Soon I was to find that people who had been creative at one stage of growth now seemed empty of ideas—and worse, they seemed not to notice that the ground had moved up under their feet! As I grew and encountered higher ideals and new goals, what had once been acceptable now seemed lethargic at best and lethal if ignored. You can’t take everyone with you just because they were with you where you were before.”

“All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”

“Any married man should forget his mistakes—there’s no use in two people remembering the same thing.”