To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.

How many people does each of us know who claim to seek happiness but freely choose paths inevitably leading to misery?

Equality of Ugliness: If we can't all live in a beautiful place we must all live in an ugly place.

The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in their power to improve, but do not imagine themselves to be saviours. In their humble struggle is true heroism.

Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems.