“Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.”

“A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.”

“The loss of a thing affects us until we have lost it altogether.”

“We shall play every game to the hilt with every ounce of fiber we have in our bodies.”

“The highest grades of humanity have passed through the millstones more than once.”

“I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.”

“Six months at most after they get here, these young people — and they are mostly young who come — have lost every idea they had, except flirtation and temperature.”

“I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society.”

“To take another simile [that the brain is like a machine], if we imagine a great library containing books which have a vast number of cross references one to another, then should one whole shelf be burned, it might be possible to reconstruct the lost books -- but somewhat less perfectly than at first.”

“They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge … no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command … But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young.”