If I'm among men who don't ...

If I'm among men who don't agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself. A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively. Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it's absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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 Irvin D. Yalom

Quotes from the same author

Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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 Irvin D. Yalom
Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms. The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One's own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one's sphere of control. There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
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 Irvin D. Yalom
Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
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 Irvin D. Yalom
The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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 Irvin D. Yalom
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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 Irvin D. Yalom