If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.

The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.

Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.