“If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?”

“A man from the Land of Fools wanted to pull down the clouds.'Why?' someone asked him.'To squeeze out the rain.”

“People are always trying to understand.There is only one way to do that.It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand.”

“People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”

“Exaggeration is a standard peculiarity of man. To deprecate is often a form of exaggeration which people do not notice, because it appears to be its opposite.”

“You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so. I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all.”

“Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.”