Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.

the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future - is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

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.

... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction betweenour present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.

the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.