I

IDEA

The world may be only an idea of mine, but my idea is not this kind of world.

IDEALISM

Idealism is an approach to life, not an end to itself. One can be quite materialistic about so-called ideal things, such as religion, literature and the arts. On the other hand, one can be quite idealistic about material things, such as the living conditions of the working or farming man.

IDEAS

Are a versatile metal that can be beaten into plows or swords, or hammer and sickle.

Words, profound and meaningless, pop out when thought fails.

More people have died for false idols than true ideas.

IDENTITY

Basically, all people are alike. That is perhaps the cause of their constant squabbles and feuds; they dislike in each other their own debilities.

IDLENESS

Don’t kill time—you may yet discover you could have used it.

Idleness is preoccupation with the barnacles of thought.

IDOLS

If it be true that one becomes like what he worships, what monsters this world’s idols must be!

IGNORANCE

It is not the ignorant who forever keep the Devil’s brew boiling, but rather the wiseacres and their erudite friends.

Most people don’t care enough to search for the facts of the issues they talk about with such concern.

ILLUSION

If this be all just an illusion, take away the world and leave me my dreams!

IMAGINATION

Reality—what a poor substitute for imagination!

Imagination is the arena of the genius.

Science, too, must ride Pegasus—diligence its legs, but imagination its wings.

Heaven is a matter of imagination but so are hate, love, and pretty much everything else.

IMITATION

Is nine-tenths of our cultural pattern.

IMMORALITY

Acts of animalism are nothing more than that; immoral they are not. Immorality occurs only when there exists an antagonistic tendency or act against society.

IMMORTALITY

Is no more fabulous than birth: that out of dust and dirt can rise an organism of a billion muscles, nerves and bones, to talk and walk and think and then dry up and bury itself back into a hole of dirt and dust. Who can fathom the whereto and wherefore of life immortal?

In passing away we only take to the heavens what we leave to mankind.

The truly great from Lao-tse to Spinoza never discussed life after death, only before it.

IMMUTABILITY

Great men die but great ideas live on.

INDEPENDENCE

Is the wish of a peasant: to raise porridge with his own two hands.

The free man wants to live, create and work in interdependence. Man is to man a Devil but sometimes a God.

INDIFFERENCE

Being wrong is no disgrace, being indifferent is.

There is no greater temptation than that of indifference.

INDOLENCE

Takes others for granted, but graver yet is the consequence of taking oneself for granted.

AN INFIDEL

Is one who does not accept the superstitions of his community.

INFLUENCE

There comes a time when the twig can no longer be bent.

INHIBITIONS

If we could see desires, if greeds and lusts, hates and envies, jealousies and revulsions, the whole array of human feelings had a corporeal form, this would be an impossible world; it is the sobering social inhibitions that make coexistence tolerable.

It isn’t the lack of inhibitions that distinguishes man from man but rather the choice of inhibitions. The lack of inhibitions merely distinguishes animal from man.

INSANITY

It has become downright modish to claim a touch of madness. Some women speak of their psychiatrist as of their hairdresser or modiste—a sort of confessor-in-waiting.

Insanity is a frequent visitor of genius under stress, a strange guest of the lonely in their flight from reality.

The insane mind has as many variations as the sane; sometimes I wonder which one contributes more to the madness of the world.

For the very same actions and expressions some were declared to be suffering from religious mania, others were called saints and divines.

INSTRUCTIONS

Teach kindness and you reap intelligence; teach hate and you reap prejudice.

INTEGRITY

They teach you early how to wash your face and body, in school and home, but how to cleanse your mind of putrid ideas and prejudice, that is left unsaid and thus undone. I am afraid that even the occasional ablutions in the church are scarcely purifying, no more than face-saving. They walk about with shining faces and decaying souls.

INTEMPERANCE

Is an annoyance, but controlled enmity is something to look out for.

INTERESTING

Even the dullest is interesting when speaking his mind honestly; it is the scintillating surface conversationalist who is the intolerable bore.

INTUITION

Is thinking ahead, as reason is thinking back.

ISSUES

Handle people with gloves; but issues, bare-fisted.