A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.

Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism.

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist.

It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.

The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.

Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.

America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it.

I am a humble adherent of...Enlightenment Rationalist Fundamentalism.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

If UEFA will not embrace video technology, then we need two more officials behind the goals to help the referee.

It's surprising that the world is understandable to the extent that it is.

I didn't want the easy kind of love, I wanted the crazy love, the kind of love that created and destroyed all at the same time.

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.

History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

If a poet writes to save his soul, he may save the soul of others.

As the cause is, so the effect will be Cause is never different from effect, the effect is but the cause reproduced in another form.

Musing on the phrase 'waste of time.' So much more complex than it appears. Many 'wastes of time' small talk, daydreaming are imperatives.

I want to represent possibilities. I want to represent magic, right, that you're in a universe, and two plus two equals four.