You took the best, so why not take the rest?

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.