Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

Human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.