We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.

What is dangerous about tranquillizers is that whatever peace of mind they bring is a packaged peace of mind. Where you buy a pill and buy peace of mind with it, you get conditioned to cheap solutions instead of deep ones.

The best thing about lying in bed late is that you learn to distinguish between first things and trivia, for whatever presses on you has to prove its importance before it makes you move.

Every step by which men add to their knowledge and skills is a step also by which they can control other men.

In our culture we make heroes of the men who sit on top of a heap of money, and we pay attention not only to what they say in their field of competence, but to their wisdom on every other question in the world.

Small wars are always teetering on the brink of becoming big ones.