Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relationships according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The phantoms of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations. Let us liberate them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away. Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts. Let us teach men, says one, to exchange these imaginations for thoughts which correspond to the essence of man; says the second, to take up a critical attitude to them; says the third, to knock them out of their heads; and — existing reality will collapse.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

Men are defeated and dominated, though they do not know it; they fear freedom, though they believe themselves to be free. They follow general formulas and prescriptions as if by their own choice. They are directed; they do not direct themselves. Their creative power is impaired. They are objects, not Subjects.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

There are in all ages men born to be in bondage to the opinions of the society in which they live.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. (5). (Enchiridion 5)

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be - and are ruined

Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

One of the most widespread superstitions is that
every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a
man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc.
Men are not like that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is
the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow
here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now
clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with
men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every
human quality and sometimes one manifests itself,
sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike
himself — while still remaining the same man.

It is the thoughts of men that are deceitful, Their pledges that are loose.