“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.”

It is only to stress the fact that the difference between a clandestine literature and no literature equals the difference between one and zero.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.

What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use.

War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.

The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness.

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.

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.

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another.

We may not be able to do any great thing; but if each of us will do something, however small it may be, a good deal will be accomplised for God.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.

Everyone can promise you love, but only a few will take action. Walk the talk.

The reward of a good deed is in having done it.

Do what others refuse to do.

I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.

Actions don’t only speak louder than words; actions should be used to interpret words.