In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole.

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another.

The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from obsolete ways of living and inconsequential talk.

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

There might be a fact of the greatest significance reported by Thucydides which will only be recognized as such a hundred years from now.

History is still in large measure poetry to me.

True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much.

Only a fairy tale calls a constant condition 'happiness'.

In darkness God's truth shines most clear.

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.

Did you feel that?' I asked him.He smiled sadly. 'Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

Instinct is the most powerful thing you have, and you have to trust it.

Trips are part of humanity. Emigration is a part of humanity. And it's ever more dynamic due to globalization.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

To live by a large river is to be kept in the heart of things.