Institutions or products of culture. But they formalize a set of norms.

No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.

There can be no understanding without that sympathy which puts us, through the imagination, and (another's) situation.

The bacteriologist, often risking his life to find cures for lethal afflictions, was another kind of imperial hero, as brave in his way as the soldier-explorer.

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism

The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril

I wrote this book because I had formed a strong impression that the people currently living were paying insufficient attention to the dead.

Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

Since the age of fifteen poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or performed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles

That's it, Uncle Huey!" Imogene Duckworthy whipped off her apron and flung it onto the slick, stainless steel counter. "I quit!" If only her voice didn’t sound so young.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

No matter what theory of the origin of government you adopt, if you follow it out to its legitimate conclusions it will bring you face to face with the moral law.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

I don't want to be a hero, I don't want to ever let you down.

I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.