the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons

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

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt.

What is eternal is the cloud drifting slowly out of sight.

Modernity kills ghostly romance("The Undying Thing")

I can't be casual about losing. I always think I have a chance to win until winning is absolutely impossible.

The real luxury travel of the modern age is not through space it's through time.

The rise of the Soviet school to the summit of world chess is a logical result of socialist cultural development.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

Sociology isthescience of talk, and there is onlyone law in sociology. Bad talk drives out good.

Designs that have a whiff of complex impenetrability tends to suggest big, complicated ideas. Academic writing tends to work the same way, I understand.

There is no objective criteria for either success or failure. People who achieve their goals are successful, those who don't are not.