There is a certain point of unity within the self, and between the self and its world, certain complicity and magnetic mating, a certain harmony, that conscious mind and will cannot direct. Perhaps analysis and the separate mastery of each element are required before the instincts are ready to assume command, but only at first. Command by instinct is swifter, subtler, deeper, more accurate, more in touch with reality than command by conscious mind. The discovery takes one's breath away.
Michael NovakIt is almost inconceivable that citizens of that time were willing to support so bloody a war, by putting so high a price upon Union and Liberty.
Michael NovakEverything I do that I'm enthusiastic about. This is genuine enthusiasm. If I don't - I mean I've done other projects that I have not been a fan of until I realized I was doing it and I wasn't really there. And I don't do those anymore.
Michael NovakIn most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.
Michael NovakTradition lives because young people come along who catch its romance and add new glories to it.
Michael NovakThere is an alternative to terror. It is called, in the political order, democracy. In the economic order, it is called the dynamic enterprise economy. (...) It empowers poor people from the bottom up. (...) A dynamic economic sector is the poor's best hope of escaping the prison of poverty. It is the only system so far known to human beings to take poor people and make them, quite soon, middle class, and some of them even (horrors!) rich.
Michael Novak