"To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible."

“There's this idea that if you take your clothes off, somehow you must have loose morals.”

Source : "From high earner to highbrow" by Mark Morris, www.theguardian.com. June 03, 2000.

“The 1st question the effective decision-maker asks is: 'Is this a generic situation or an exception?'”

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

Source : Hermann Hesse (2012). “Demian: A Dual-Language Book”, p.18, Courier Corporation

“I don't smoke as many joints as I used to.”

“The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to take his own life.”

“It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.”

“Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay." It's like saying, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black."”

Source : "Michael Steele, au revoir" by Michael Tomasky, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2009.

“To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.”