No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the sta….

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy f….

Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convin….

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world..

A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the ….

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting u….

You think that you can judge what's good or evil from whether you enjoy doing it or not. You think that evil is what always appears in the form of a ….

Our Last Will and Testament, providing for the only future of which we can be reasonably certain, namely our own death, shows thatthe Will's need to ….

every political structure, new or old, left to itself develops stabilizing forces which stand in the way of constant transformation and expansion. Th….

the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which….

Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and ... such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts t….

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

Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future-with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals-have a worse rec….

The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its….

Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be ju….

And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is ….

the right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right ... Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enu….

If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in m….

They must remember that they are constantly on the run, and that the world's reality is actually expressed by their escape..

Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in….

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fic….