The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewi
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? — the cuckoo clock. – Graham Greene and Orson Wells, The Third Man