We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

To believe that if only we had this or that we would be happy, or to pursue any excessive desire, diverts us from seeing that happiness depends on an adequate self.

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."

Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can win a man's heart one day and lose it the next. But when we break a proud spirit we achieve something that is final and absolute.

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.

Far more critical than what we know or what we don't know is what we don't want to know.