The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

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.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing