When you think you know something: that is a most perfect barrier against learning.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity.

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer.

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.