Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.

"It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness."

When we set up judgments for others, they become rules that we have to play by, too. By judging others for what we don’t have or because we envy them, we sabotage our own lives far more than we ever really hurt anybody else.

After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside — neither part of themselves, nor yet free...They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it.

Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.

Who the hell set things up like this?

"[One of the biggest differences between him and his rivals for the Republican nomination was] "every one of them wants to torture people. It's amazing.

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

My dear Socrates … you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally right. But you may confuse them about things they’ve been doing just fine without getting in trouble. You are destroying people’s illusions about themselves. You are taking the joy of ignorance out of the things we don’t understand. And you have no answer; you have no answer to offer them.

motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

So why take on the burden of matters which you cannot answer for? You are only making unnecessary problems for yourself.

Trouble trouble and it will trouble you!