Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

Recently I was reading somewhere or other an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. Inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion.

Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.