We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the 11th hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

Real art is illumination, it adds stature to life.

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

After each war there is a little less democracy left to save.

The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.