“A life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers”

Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.

Half of politics is “image-making”, the other half is the art of making people believe the image.

As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

Justice demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.

Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them children.

When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

For legends attract the very best in our times, just as ideologies attract the average, and the whispered tales of gruesome secret powers behind the scenes attract the very worst.

Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital.

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.

Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.

The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.

The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.

As is commonly said, ‘to start anything is simple; to develop it and bring it to a successful culmination takes great effort.’

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science.

No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain.

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not “in the name of capitalism,” but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

Education develops the intellect; and the intellect distinguishes man from other creatures. It is education that enables man to harness nature and utilize her resources for the well-being and improvement of his life.

A well informed public opinion is essential to the growth of political and social awareness. Only he who is informed can comment intelligently on his nation’s development and only by such comments can errors be corrected and progress stimulated.

We develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and obstacles.