Liberalism… is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. – José Ortega y Gasset

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. – Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyper Reality, 1986

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – Isaac Newton (1642–1727), spoken the evening before his death

We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld