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.

The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.

The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.