The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life, do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long. Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie

“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”

“I was born a heretic. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony, U.S. reformer and suffragist”

“Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.”

“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers."

“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not...”

“In our spiritual pilgrimage we see sins which mar our relationship with God, but beneath it is a commitment which seeks to move beyond to a higher life, based on wholehearted surrender to God.”

“You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”

“Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man's place in the universe, and as the source of understanding of man's own nature.”

“We have made Christianity too easy.”

“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong”

“We can defeat Satan much more quickly by praising God than by worrying.”

“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I can't live," Levin said to himself.”