Everyone starts out innocent. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom is the discarding of vices and the return to virtue, by way of knowledge.

Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time.

As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.

"It's easy to mistake being innocent for being simpleminded or naive. We all want to seem sophisticated; we all want to seem street-smart. To be innocent is to be "out of it."

Yet there is a deep truth in innocence. A baby looks in his mother's eyes, and all he sees is love. As innocence fades away, more complicated things take its place. We think we need to outwit others and scheme to get what we want. We begin to spend a lot of energy protecting ourselves. Then life turns into a struggle. People have no choice but to be street-smart. How else can they survive?

When you get right down to it, survival means seeing things the way they really are and responding. It means being open. And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades."

People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

A large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition — besides inherited aptitudes and qualities — which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerfu...
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Having no lead to follow, we were swept up by words, memories, manias, grudges, and solidarities. Having no goal to aim for, we wasted what little life there was in our thoughts on joining in with a pun, speaking ill of common acquaintances, avoiding unpleasant facts, riding hobbyhorses, pushing at open doors, making faces, and preening ourselves.

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

Our environment encourages us not to be philosophers but partisans.

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we — in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?

We may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct.