Time And Time Again I Have Been

If Every Day A Man Takes Orders In Silence From An Incompetent Superior, If Every Day He Solemnly Performs Ritual Acts Which He Privately Finds Ridiculous, If He Unhesitatingly Gives Answers To Questionnaires Which Are Contrary To His Real Opinions And Is Prepared To Deny His Own Self In Public, If He Sees No Difficulty In Feigning Sympathy Or Even Affection Where, In Fact, He Feels Only Indifference Or Aversion, It Still Does Not Mean That He Has Entirely Lost The Use Of One Of The Basic Human Senses, Namely, The Sense Of Humiliation.

My Dear Fellow Citizens: For Forty Years You Have Heard From My Predecessors On This Day Different Variations Of The Same Theme: How Our Country Flourished, How Many Millions Of Tons Of Steel We Produced, How Happy We All Were, How We Trusted Our Government, And What Bright Perspectives Were Unfolding In Front Of Us. I Assume You Did Not Propose Me For This Office So That I, Too, Would Lie To You.

The Only Salvation Of The World Today... Is The Rapid Dissemination Of The Basic Values Of The West, That Is, The Ideas Of Democracy, Human Rights, The Civil Society, And The Free Market.

It's Not Hard To Stand Behind One's Successes. But To Accept Responsibility For One's Failures... That Is Devishly Hard!

We Ask Ourselves All Kinds Of Questions, Such As Why Does A Peacock Have Such Beautiful Feathers, And We May Answer That He Needs The Feathers To Impress A Female Peacock, But Then We Ask Ourselves, And Why Is There A Peacock? And Then We Ask, Why Is There Anything Living? And Then We Ask, Why Is There Anything At All? And If You Tell Some Advocate Of Scientism That The Answer Is A Secret, He Will Go White Hot And Write A Book. But It Is A Secret. And The Experience Of Living With The Secret And Thinking About It Is In Itself A Kind Of Faith.