Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.

The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.

Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.