Modern man is a hard driven nomad without any stability, not (as the Bible has it) a wanderer or a pilgrim, but a refugee-an escapist. Instead of meditation and reflection there is only speed, fear and “distraction.

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights.

Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.

For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.

People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.

Only a person with convictions has a genuine possibility to be tolerant. He who accepts no absolute values but clings to polite doubt cannot be tolerant but merely indifferent. He is morally defenseless in the face of evil.

[T]he democratic principle of "one man, one vote," viewed against a background of voting masses numbering several millions, only serves to demonstrate the pitiful helplessness of the inarticulate individual, who functions at the polls as the smallest indivisible arithmetical (and not always algebraic) unit. He acts in total anonymity, secrecy and legal irresponsibility.