Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
Yes, an element of abstraction, of a divorce from reality, entered into such calamities. Still when abstraction sets to killing you, you’ve got to get busy with it.
There can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.
The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.
Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love.
Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.
But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four.
