To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. It not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.