All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members.

There was no cure for the human condition because every man read the present and plotted the future in the light of his own past.

One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

Well I travelled quite a lot in the east, and one of the things that impressed me greatly was the buddhist notion of the continuity of things, the wheel of life which is what we're talking about, the ever turning wheel.

He had fallen into the error of all liberals: the belief that men are prepared to reform themselves, that good will attracts good will, that truth has leavening virtue of its own.

I look out this window and think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and the birds and everything else and I am part of it. I didn't ask to be put here. I've been lucky finding myself here.

None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature.