The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. - Erich Fromm

The more man understands and masters nature the less he needs to use religion as a scientific explanation and as a magical device for controlling nature.

We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer. This position will be characterized by some as "overoptimistic," "utopian," or "unrealistic." In order to appreciate the merits of such criticism a discussion of the ambiguity of hope and the nature of optimism and pessimism seems called for.