When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

... clear thinking is not the characteristic which distinguishes our literature today. We are more and more caught up by the unintelligible. People like it. This argues an inability to think, or, almost as bad, a disinclination to think.

Convention, so often a mask for injustice.

The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.

One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead. ... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.

Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.

Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.