Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required.

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

the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

If men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking, they would lose the capacity for asking all the unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.

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

Goodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes.

It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage"There is no alternative to victory" retains a high degree of plausibility.