There Is Only One Thing

The Kind Of Hope That I Often Think About…i Understand Above All As A State Of Mind, Not A State Of The World. Either We Have Hope Within Us, Or We Don’t. It Is A Dimension Of The Soul It’s Not Essentially Dependent Upon Some Particular Observation Of The World Or Estimate Of The Situation. Hope Is Not The Conviction That Something Will Turn Out Well, But The Certainty That Something Makes Sense, Regardless Of How It Turns Out.

Our Social And Economic Statistics Are Telling Us What We Already Know In Our Hearts: We Have Created A World That Works For Only A Few. To Change This, We Must Learn To Act Toward Each Other And Our Environment In Profoundly Different Ways.

There Can Be No Doubt That Distrust Of Words Is Less Harmful Than Unwarranted Trust In Them. Besides, To Distrust Words, And Indict Them For The Horrors That Might Slumber Unobtrusively Within Them - Isn’t This, After All, The True Vocation Of The Intellectual?

The Attempt To Devote Oneself To Literature Alone Is A Most Deceptive Thing, And ... Often, Paradoxically, It Is Literature That Suffers For It.

It Cannot Suffice To Invent New Machines, New Regulations, New Institutions. It Is Necessary To Change And Improve Our Understanding Of The True Purpose Of What We Are And What We Do In The World. Only Such A New Understanding Will Allow Us To Develop New Models Of Behavior, New Scales Of Values And Goals, And Thereby Invest The Global Regulations, Treaties And Institutions With A New Spirit And Meaning.