"There is nothing more alluring to man..." - Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.”

“I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye.”

“Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.”

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”

“As a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts. For art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and a spirit which finds its greatest flowering in the free society. I see of little more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.”

“That fierce imprisonment in the self is but the obverse of the self-giving which is absolute reality.”

“If you reflect within yourself and find nothing to be ashamed of, how could you have anxiety or fear.”

“The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.”

“By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.”