Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.

Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.