"When such a friendship exists, it should not be called a friendship, because it has taken on a totally new dimension: I call it 'friendliness.' It has gone beyond relationship, because all relationships are bondages in some way or other – they make you a slave and they enslave others. Friendliness is simply the joy of sharing without any conditions, without any expectations, with no desire that something should be returned – not even gratefulness.

"Friendliness is the purest kind of love.

"It is not a need, it is not a necessity:

"It is sheer abundance, overflowing ecstasy.

"Zarathustra says,

Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves.

"A man who believes in others is a man who is afraid to believe in himself. The Christian, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the communist – nobody is courageous enough to have faith in his own being. He believes in others. And he believes in those who believe in him.

"It is really ridiculous: your friend needs you, he is afraid of his aloneness; you need him, because you are afraid of your aloneness. Both are afraid of aloneness. Do you think your being together means your alonenesses will disappear? They will be simply doubled, or perhaps multiplied; hence all relationships lead into more misery, into more anguish.

"The same is true about faith. Why do you believe in Jesus? – can't you believe in yourself? Why do you believe in Gautam Buddha? – can't you believe in yourself? And have you ever thought about the implication? – if you cannot believe in yourself, how can you believe in your belief in Gautam Buddha? Fundamentally, it is your belief. Gautam Buddha has nothing to do with it.

"If you cannot believe in yourself you cannot believe in anyone, you can only deceive. It is easier to deceive if you have somebody else as an object of faith, but it is your faith – the faith of a man who is hollow, the faith of a man who knows nothing about himself, the faith of a man who lives in utter darkness and unconsciousness, the faith of a faithless man."