It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.

All forms of fear produce fatigue.

If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the “intellectual love of God.” Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.