It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions, and so on. But business also corrupts monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a non-capitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive—it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites—opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity—where energies flow smoothly in one direction—there will be much doing but no music.

A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.

It has been said that all places are equidistant from heaven, and all eras equidistant from eternity.

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world.

If a society is to preserve its stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values, and fantasies on everyday life. At present, most nations are threatened more by their juveniles within than by enemies without.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.