The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. ......Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

When a man speaks of the need for realism one may be sure that this is always the prelude to some bloody deed.

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.

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

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