The raw material from which social institutions are fashioned is always more or less recalcitrant and any human society will tend to produce a caricature of itself.

It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision...That is the sort of time we live in now. We...live in an epoch in which the solid ground of our preconceived ideas shakes daily under our uncertain feet.

Faith will not be restored in the West because people believe it to be useful. It will return only when they find that it is true.

[To the cultures of Asia and the continent of Africa] it is the Western impact which has stirred up the winds of change and set the processes of modernization in motion. Education brought not only the idea of equality but also another belief which we used to take for granted in the West-the idea of progress, the idea that science and technology can be used to better human conditions. In ancient society, men tended to believe themselves fortunate if tomorrow was not worse than today and anyway, there was little they could do about it.

It is very much easier for a rich man to invest and grow richer than for the poor man to begin investing at all. And this is also true of nations.

Fear can indeed be the beginning of wisdom.

in modern society, fear of unemployment remains the darkest of the shadows thrown by the past. In an industrial order, a man out of work is almost a man out of life.