“An instinct is weakened when it rationalises itself: for by rationalising itself it weakens itself.”

“The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind.”

“It is our discomforts which provoke, which create consciousness; their task accomplished, they weaken and disappear one after the other. Consciousness however remains and survives them, without recalling what it owes to them, without even ever having known. Hence it continually proclaims its autonomy, its sovereignty, even when it loathes itself and would do away with itself.”

“The history of religion is the history of appalling violence, slaughter and sexual abuses, rationalised by the fairy tales of religious delusions.”

“Just as the roads at Moscow's heart flow out in concentric ripples from the Kremlin, so this tension too seems to radiate from those secret and formidable walls, lapping outward to the suburbs and to the farthest confines of the Soviet Union itself, in ever-weakening but pervasive rings.”

“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.”