“Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time an...”

“You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisatio...”

“...it's better to wake up amid the pangs of desire than amid those of remorse.”

“Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices”

“Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts an...”

“I no more believe in simplistic solutions than I do in simplistic identieties. The world is a complex machine that can't be dismantled with a srewdriver. But that shouldn't prevent us from observin...”

“Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.”

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

“I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myse...”

“Let us not project our own spiritual limitations onto the modern world, for it is not the world which prevents us from being religious. The kind of world we live in shapes the manner and mode of ou...”

“The death of God left the angels in a strange position.”

“We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development part of...”

“Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there's you fellows who can't be trusted. And then there's the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not me...”

“Well-being is attained little by little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.”

“Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside, is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent,...”