Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. 'To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.'

Man is a fugitive from nature.

The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary.

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

The struggle with the past is not a hand-to-hand fight. The future overcomes it by swallowing it. If it leaves anything outside it is lost.

The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.