Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass.
...
Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.

We came to the conclusion that it is better to avoid external wars, so we went home and took the strife with us....We fight each other within the limits of the law and the constitution, and we are inclined to think of democracy as a chronic state of mitigated war. We are far from being at peace with ourselves: on the contrary, we hate and fight each other because we have succeeded on introverting war

....We still labour under the unwholesome delusion that we should be at peace within ourselves.

...Our order would be perfect if only everybody could direct his aggressiveness inwards, into his own psyche. Unfortunately, our religious education prevents us from doing this, with its false promises of an immediate peace within.

...We psychologists have learned, through long and painful experience, that you deprive a man of his best resource when you help him to become sufficiently aware of them and to start a conscious conflict within himself. In this way the complex becomes a focus of life....It is surely better to know that your worst enemy is right there in your own heart.
Man's instincts are ineradicable–therefore a state of perfect peace is unthinkable. Moreover, peace is uncanny because it breeds war. True democracy is a highly psychological institution which takes account of human nature as it is and makes allowances for the necessity of conflict within its own national boundaries.

“If you want to write a novel, write a novel. If it’s essays you want or short stories, write them. In the process of writing them you will learn how. You can have the confidence that you will gradually acquire the technique and craft you need. Instead people often begin writing from a poverty mentality. They are empty and they run to teachers and classes to learn about writing. We learn writing by doing it. That simple. We don’t learn by going outside ourselves to authorities we think know about it.”

I wish I could invent a verb tense full of open spaces--a tense that didn't pretend to understand the precise mechanisms of which it spoke; a tense that could admit its own limits.

"The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House".

(This is the only essay I have read from "Sister, Outsider"; so I must read the rest of it.)