“It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”

“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

“At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).”

“Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.”

“Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.”

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”