Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.