...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.

Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

The lion will lay down with the lamb...but every morning they'll have to provide a new lamb. Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations.