The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.

The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.

That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.

The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fulness of life which each man seeks.