He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

Each man must resolve within himself issues for which his society previously took full responsibility.

Society demands that he limit himself to his function… There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.

He who would change the world should first change himself.

A man has to know he had a choice before he can enjoy what he chose. I know now. That a human has to make it with other humans . . . before he can make it with himself.

A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

If you want him to do it, you've got to change the picture of the world inside his head.

I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.

Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.

[A] nation must ravage itself before foreigners can ravage it, a man must despise himself before others can despise him.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

Myself I must remake.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.