“Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future.”

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

&quot;Letter from London&quot; (18 September 2003) http://palinstravels.co.uk/static-51?topic=1752&amp;forum=12 <br class="br">Context: Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people. Cries of “They’re evil, let’s get ‘em” or “The infidels must die” sound frightening, but they’re desperately empty of argument and understanding. They’re the rallying cries of prejudice, the call to arms of those who find it easier to hate than admit they might be not be right about everything.<br>Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

Clean, well-ordered life
Source: "I am That." P.31.

Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/reviews/malamud-reflections.html as published in &quot;Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life&quot; in The New York Times (20 March 1988); also in Talking Horse : Bernard Malamud on Life and Work (1996) edited by Alan Cheuse and ‎Nicholas Delbanco, p. 35 <br class="br">Context: If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace. Not everyone can make a first-rate living as a writer, but a writer who is serious and responsible about his work, and life, will probably find a way to earn a decent living, if he or she writes well. A good writer will be strengthened by his good writing at a time, let us say, of the resurgence of ignorance in our culture. I think I have been saying that the writer must never compromise with what is best in him in a world defined as free.

Address of 1964, republished in Portfolio for Peace (1968), p. 14
Context: Two world wars were fought to make the world safe for democracy. Today we have to wage a war on all fronts. This war has to be waged in peace time, but it has to be waged as energetically and with as much total national effort as in times of war. The war we have to wage today has only one goal, and that is to make the world safe for diversity.
The concept of peaceful coexistence has been criticized by many who do not see the need to make the world safe for diversity. I wonder if they have ever paused to ask themselves the question: What is the alternative to coexistence?

Nobel lecture (1989)

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 62