“To think, to think, even with a split second left—to think was the only hope.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.”

“The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“And in every detail of your life, if no ultimate purpose redeemed it, there was a quality of greyness, of desolation, that could never be described, but which you could feel like a physical pang at your heart. Life, if the grave really ends it, is monstrous and dreadful. No use trying to argue it away. Think of life as it really is, think of the details of life; and then think that there is no meaning in it, no purpose, no goal except the grave. Surely only fools or self-deceivers, or those whose lives are exceptionally fortunate, can face that thought without flinching?”

“One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think, as I thought then, that it is better to die violently and not too old.”