The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.

people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.

Those who feel guilty are afraid; and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.