“Continued observations in clinical psychological practice lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human make-up. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction – for orientation.”

“Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.”Aristotle”

“Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.”

“I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

“The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.”

“Anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart ’til it reaches my outer me”

“Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the ‘soul’ or the ‘spirit’ ceases likewise.I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.”

“If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride”

“Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.”

“The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.”

“Your life is a movie. You are the main character. You say your scripts and act to your lines. Of course you do your lines in each scene. There is a hidden camera and a director who you can ask for help anytime up above.”

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”

“No, I’d better not speak of it. It’s a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words. This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden as I dreamed. Just like the feeling for my child, there was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly. There will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife. I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it. I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying. But my life now—my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me—every minute of it—is no more meaningless as it was before, but has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

“Only a fool fears making mistakes.”

“Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is largely a government cover up department for badly behaved corporations.”