“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”

“Only a man who does not survive his one supreme act remains the indisputable master of his identity and possible greatness because he withdraws into death from the possible consequences and continuation of what he began.”

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

“The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.”

“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.”

“Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action -- the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors -- is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents.”

“Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. ”