But what is significant is that if you don't want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don't matter, and the reasons are never as ‘reasonable' as we like to think they are.

It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, 'the greatest', but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.

The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.