It is in the nature of all party systems that the authentically political talents can assert themselves only in rare cases, and it is even rarer that the specifically political qualifications survive the petty maneuvers of party politics with its demands for plain salesmanship.

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

To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.

The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.

Every thought is an afterthought.

Our Last Will and Testament, providing for the only future of which we can be reasonably certain, namely our own death, shows thatthe Will's need to will is no less strong than Reason's need to think; in both instances the mind transcends its own natural limitations, either by asking unanswerable questions or by projecting itself into a future which, for the willing subject, will never be.