Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.

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.

True knowledge is knowledge of why things are as they are, and not merely what they are.

The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

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

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