Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

When folks are in desperate times - say, like being stuck in the middle of a long-running interplanetary war - they grasp onto anything that might keep them afloat.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.