Poets ... are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake ...it for a universal one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the... action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no l...ess definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody's assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must the...refore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we may remember what the Romans ... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men..., among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the word "education" has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion w...ithout the use of force.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between... our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to t...heir own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new--but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »