There is no a prior reason for supposing that the truth, when it is discovered, will necessarily prove interesting.

Liberty and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and justice - all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet when they are incompatible, they cannot all be attained, choices must be made, sometimes tragic losses accepted in the pursuit of some preferred ultimate end.

The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.

There is no a prior reason for supposing that the truth, when it is discovered, will necessarily prove interesting.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.