— Page 37 of 65 pages.
“Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if it was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I don’t take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if that’s the game.”
“I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
“If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.”
“The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.”
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.”
“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”
“I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.”
“Every man who is truly a man must learn to be alone in the midst of all others, and if need be against all others.”