“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.”

The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.

Tools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.

The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.

Evil, as she saw it, need not be committed only by demonic monsters but—with disastrous effect—by morons and imbeciles as well, especially if, as we see in our own day, their deeds are sanctioned by religious authority.

Men in plural, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.

For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army.

Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.

For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.

If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.

Hitlerism exercised its strong international and inter-European appeal during the thirties because racism, although a state doctrine only in Germany, had been a powerful trend in public opinion everywhere.

Pundits talk about ‘populist rage’ as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class.

Suffering is part of the human condition, and it comes to us all. The key is how we react to it, either turning away from God in anger and bitterness or growing closer to Him in trust and confidence.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Anger is as sacred and valid as any other emotion.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain; Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again?

If Zizou kept his temper, he would not be the genius that he is.

I know how bad Albany is. I know it better than most. I understand why people are angry. I’m angry. The question is going to be, how do you change Albany, what is the plan for change, and then how do you actually get it done?

Leadership is not bullying and leadership is not aggression. Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place.