Man is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness.

[I]f we feel that creation does not express purpose, it is impossible to find an authorization for purpose in our own lives.

It will be found that every attack upon religion, or upon characteristic ideas inherited from religion, when its assumptions are laid bare, turns out to be an attack upon mind.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have.

Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.