“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.

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.

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.

I want to fall in love. But it’s not easy. Finding a soul like yours never is.

I wish it were easy. You know to be brave. And look at myself without quickly wanting to turn away.

Your life’s course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do. Those are the easy things. It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard.

The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.

Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.

I used to have the craziest fear of losing teeth. I would have nightmares about that all the time. But it’s the craziest thing, because I feel like that’s one of the easiest things to fix. You just get veneers or something.

It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.