Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them.

Mostly, brothers and sisters, we become the victims of our own wrong desires. Moreover, we live in an age when many simply refuse to feel responsible for themselves. Thus, a crystal-clear understanding of the doctrines pertaining to desire is so vital because of the spreading effluent oozing out of so many unjustified excuses by so many. This is like a sludge which is sweeping society along toward "the gulf of misery and endless wo" (Hel. 5:12). Feeding that same flow is the selfish philosophy of "no fault," which is replacing the meek and apologetic "my fault." We listen with eager ear to hear genuine pleas for forgiveness instead of the ritualistic "Sorry. I hope I can forgive myself."

So we have this system of thought. Now, I say that this system has a fault in it — a systemic fault. It's not a fault here, there or there, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It's everywhere and nowhere. You may say 'I see a problem here, so I will bring my thought to bear on this problem'. But 'my' thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault. We have this systemic fault; and you can see that this is what has been going on in all these problems of the world — such as the problems that the fragmentation of nations has produced. We say: 'Here is a fault. Something has gone wrong.' But in dealing with it, we use the same kind of fragmentary thought that produced the problem, just a somewhat different version of it; therefore it's not going to help, and it may make things worse.

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.

The world's oldest wisdom: each evil thought infuses the mind, sooner or later, with an unholy fear.

Doesn’t that feel more powerful? Try it. Maybe instead of “fault” you prefer the word “responsibility,” but the idea is the same. Think of every bad thing that happened to you, and imagine that you happened to it.

The main misfortune, the root of all evil to come, was loss of the confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date of follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were crammed down everybody's throat.

The main trouble, the root of the future evil, was loss of faith in the value of one’s own opinion. People imagined that the time when they followed the urgings of their moral sense was gone, that now they had to sing to the general tune and live by foreign notions imposed on everyone.

Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

"The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth."

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.