There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.

There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.

All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.

The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each mans interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.

But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

Most of the victims of Nazi aggression were before the war less well off than Germany. They should not be expected by Germany to bear, unaided, the major costs of Nazi aggression.

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.

When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans.

Israel would not do that, both because we cannot afford to be accused by the world of aggression and because we cannot, for security and social reasons, absorb in our midst a substantial Arab population.

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this situation with all these other kids and sometimes you need to get your aggression out. And if you'd had people be mean to you before, it really does build character.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

Only the change on the international scene, the crisis in the gulf, and the strong, firm position of the United States against aggression between two Arab countries created realities that led to the Madrid Peace Conference.

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.

I've pent up all my aggression, kept swallowing it and swallowing it.

In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.

Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression.

In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought.

Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.

I think when there's enough will and aggression, there's no shortage of talent either.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.