States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.

To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm-a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

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

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.

Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

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.