Philosopher Quotes

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style.

In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions.

If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact.

I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act.

Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge.

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.

A threatened nation can react to uncertain dangers solely through administrative channels, to the truly embarrassing situation of perhaps overreacting.

The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.

I consider Bush's decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.

After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests.

Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis.

One never really knows who one's enemy is.

Each murder is one too many.

The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

I am I plus my circumstances.

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.