Liberalism -- it is well to recall this today -- is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man.