"Everybody is brought up as a child. That is your first way into the world; that's how you have been trained for years, to remain a child. Everything was ordered, and you were expected to obey. You have become very dependent – you always go on looking for father-figures, you always go on looking for authorities to say to you what should be done, what should not be done.

"Maturity means the understanding to decide for oneself, the understanding to be decisive on your own. To stand on your own feet – that's what maturity is. But it rarely happens, because parents spoil almost every child, more or less. And then there is the school and the college and the university – they are all ready to spoil you. It is very rare that somebody becomes mature.

"The society is not happy with mature people. Mature people are dangerous people, because a mature person lives according to his own being. He goes on doing his own thing – he does not bother what people say, what their opinion is. He does not hanker for respectability, for prestige; he does not bother for honor. He lives his own life – he lives it at any cost. He is ready to sacrifice everything, but he is never ready to sacrifice his freedom.

"Society is afraid of these people; society wants everybody to remain childish. Everybody should be kept at an age somewhere between seven and fourteen – that's where people are.

"In the First World War, for the first time, psychologists became aware of this strange phenomenon. For the first time on a large scale, in the army, people's mental ages were searched for. And it was a strange discovery: the army people had the average mental age of twelve. Your body may be fifty, your mind remains somewhere below fourteen.

"Before fourteen you are repressed – because after fourteen repression becomes difficult. By the time a child is fourteen, if he has not been repressed then there is no possibility to repress him ever – because once he becomes a sexual being, he becomes powerful. Before fourteen he is weak, soft, feminine. Before fourteen you can put anything into his mind – he is suggestible, you can hypnotize him."