“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.”

“It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality...”

“The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.”

“Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.”

“Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.”

“The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching...”

“Is there magic in this world? Certainly! But it is not the kind of magic written about in fantasy stories. It is the kind of magic that comes from ideas and the hard work it often takes to make the...”

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

“A culture of unaccountability is a culture without incentive, and a culture without incentive is the death of critical and creative thinking.”

“There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the r...”

“It is possible for a Christian to be perfectly orthodox and yet to be defeated, and to be living a defeated and a useless life.”

“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will ...”