State solutions are imposed from above; they are often without corrective devices, and cannot easily be reversed on the proof of failure. Their inflexibility goes hand in hand with their planned and goal-directed nature, and when they fail the efforts of the state are directed not to changing them but to changing people’s belief that they have failed.

Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.

Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.

When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.

Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next