Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

When my job was attempting to predict future economic developments for the Shell oil company I was frequently reminded of an Arabic saying: 'Those who claim to foresee the future are lying even if by chance they are later proved right.'

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood the esprit de corps the focus - there being no past or future just the ball. As trite as it sounds I was happiest playing ball.

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

Every therapeutic cure and still more any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech and which by imposing the most terrible punishments treats each and every attempt at criticism however morally justified and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.

I fear it's because religion is man's attempt to reach God and when he feels he has succeeded he cannot abide anyone else's claim to have done the same.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature and it is an obligation I believe for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.