No perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.

No perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure.

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing completely straight was ever made

Utopias have their value -- nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities -- but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal.