I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the "backwards law." When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink you float. When you hold your breath you lose it — which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, "Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it."

This book is an exploration of this law in relation to man's quest for psychological security, and to his efforts to find spiritual and intellectual certainty in religion and philosophy. It is written in the conviction that no theme could be more appropriate in a time when human life seems to be so peculiarly insecure and uncertain. It maintains that this insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.

This begins to sound like something from "Alice Through the Looking-Glass," of which this book is a sort of philosophical equivalent. For the reader will frequently find himself in a topsy-turvy world in which the normal order of things seems completely reversed, and common sense turned inside out and upside down. — from the preface to "The Wisdom of Insecurity," dated May 1951.