Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not.

It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions.

We all carry fault within.