Free nations generally look for ways to deal with dictators amicably.

This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible.

The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

In dictatorships you need courage to fight evil; in the free world you need courage to see evil.

Japan is not a Western democracy. The Japanese have kept their traditions, culture and heritage, but they have joined the community of free nations.

It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.

Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

As soon as people become a little less fearful, they will also begin demanding more freedom.

Non-democratic regimes always need to mobilize their people against external enemies in order to maintain internal stability.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

You just have to go after what you want and if it doesn't want you back then so be it

Hatred doesn’t need company. It stews in its own loneliness and can grow still. Love needs companions. Love alone is daunted. Love together is unbound and unrestricted.

But, of course, memory and responsibility are strangers. They're foreign to each other. Memory always goes its own way quite regardless.

Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.

Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?..Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?

My hair is wild and free, but I've always been told that [straight hair] is more polished, and a more polished version of yourself is a better version of yourself. That it's more professional.

If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction.