That's the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.

But even if we were to disappear, people would still be divided into people and Others. No matter how those Others were different.People can't get by without Others. Put two people on an uninhabited island, and you'll have a human being and an Other. And the difference is that an Other is always tormented by his differentness. It's easier for people. They know they're people, and that's what they ought to be. And they all have no choice but to be that way. All of them, forever.

That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.

When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?

If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.

An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.

Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves.