There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end.

It is a fact of history that those who seek to withdraw from its great experiments usually end up being overwhelmed by them.

Our physical unity has gone far ahead of our moral unity.

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.

I have the impression that when we talk so confidently of liberty, we are unaware of the awful ... servitude of poverty when means are so small that there is literally no choice at all.

Jews were the first to believe that history itself has meaning and that progress, not repetition, is the law of life.

[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.