The good things in history are usually of very short duration, but afterward have a decisive influence on what happens over long periods of time.

The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.

Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.

Nobody is the author or producer of his own life story ... somebody began it and is its subject in the twofold sense, namely, its actor and sufferer ... but nobody is the author.