“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.”

“Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye, a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys, if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.”

“The reflection of the current social paradigm tells us we are largely determined by conditioning and conditions.”

“It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.”

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

“For me, books were not the containers of words so much as the words themselves, and the value of a given book was determined by its spiritual quality rather than its physical condition.”