“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.”

“It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.”

“On principle' one can do anything and what one does is, fundamentally, a matter of indifference, just as a man's life remains insignificant even though 'on principle' he gives his support to all the 'needs of the times.”

“What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?""Stories. And they give me hope.”

“One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”