When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship..

A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her peop….

Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals.

If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all..

Inquiry is fatal to certainty..

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war..

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both ma….

The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith..

The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can b….

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging thin….

In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order..

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, ci….

To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self..

Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only phil….

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day..

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds..

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy..

History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up..

It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country..

A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean..

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation..