No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.

The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.

Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.