It is my experience that bold decisions give the best promise of success. But one must differentiate between [strategic] and tactical boldness and a military gamble. A bold operation is one in which success is not a certainty but which in case of fai...
Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions ...
Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world's envy, and not just because our most revered universities remain on the cutting edge ...
One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as ...
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution —it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanted the true man: danger and diversion...
Now, we all have stories of how we got here, and prob-probably some of you feel angry who whoever it is who's left you here. But you must try and remember that they were like that because that's how they were taught to be. You m-must try to forgive t...
The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope and charity. Now… the first evident fact, I s...
One of the best gifts you can give to someone, is a wider perspective. It's also one of the best gifts you can receive. So if you have given someone a wider perspective, don't feel bad about it (about taking their blindfolds off and having to watch t...
How could you love us being together?" he asked me "We are nothing alike and we are not meant for each other and we drive each other crazy, you love that? How can you love that?" So I told him "I know that we're not meant for each other, that we driv...
All sorrows in life stem from the lack of cake. If you had your own cake, you wouldn't bother trying to take away the other person's cake! And, if the cake you had were beautiful enough, you wouldn't bother trying to melt the icing on that other pers...
The problem with people today, is, they have religions but they have no spirituality. They go to church but they cannot even manage the condition of their own souls. They take pride to state the name of their religions and broadcast these things on f...
In the world that we live in— purity and innocence are the true strengths. It is strength to live in a world like this and remain pure of heart, it is strength to live in a world like this and retain innocence. These are things that the world wants...
The funny thing about mundies," Jace said, to nobody in particular, "is how obsessed with magic they are for a bunch of people who don't even know what the word means." I know what it means," Clary snapped. No, you don't, you just think you do. Magic...
Remember!--It is Christianity to do good always--even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and ...
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claim...
Isaac Deutscher was best known—like his compatriot Joseph Conrad—for learning English at a late age and becoming a prose master in it. But, when he writes above, about the ‘fact’ that millions of people ‘may’ conclude something, he commit...
Making another effort to be paradoxical, Williams decides to identify Orwell as an instance of ‘the paradox of the exile’. This, which he also identified with D. H. Lawrence, constituted an actual ‘tradition’, which, in England: This is quite...
In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Aude...
For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which i...
Think only of what you desire, and expect only what you desire, even when the very contrary seems to be coming into your life. Make it a point to have definite results in mind at all times. Permit no thinking to be aimless. Every aimless thought is t...
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes lette...