It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

A man by himself is in bad company.