Levan Ramishvili

“Aquinas was in some respects a better Aristotelian than Aristotle, that not only was he an excellent interpreter of Aristotle's texts, but that he had been able to extend and deepen both Aristotle's metaphysical and his moral enquiries.”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

“The point of diplomacy in strategy is not to transform an opponent from within but to shape his incentives in ways that make him more likely to do what you want for reasons of his own interest.”
― A. Wess Mitchell

“I know a lady who, twice in her life, has lost her country. She lost it the first time as a very young woman when, in Czarist Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution occurred and she barely escaped with her life. She came to Cuba, started again from scratch, once again built up a very successful competence, was doing very well. And this time, as an elderly woman, again, she lost her country at the time Castro took over. Now, losing one’s country once would be enough for most of us, I suppose. Losing one’s country twice would be enough for the toughest person in the house—but not for this very indomitable lady. She came to the United States where again she started from scratch, and again built up a very successful competence. And now as a very elderly person, I’ve heard her tell this story on more than one occasion and invariably someone in the audience, when she is finished, will say: “You poor, unlucky woman. How you have suffered. What an ordeal you have been through.” And her answer is always the same: “I, unlucky? Ah, no. I am one of the luckiest women who ever lived. Twice I have lost my country. Twice I have had a country to which I can go. When you Americans lose your country, where will you go?” I’ve heard her ask the question more than once. I’ve never heard a convincing answer.”
― George Charles Roche III

“The philosophers, ancient and modern, agreed that the fulfillment of humanity is in the use of reason. Man is the particular being that can know the universal, the temporal being that is aware of eternity, the part that can survey the whole, the effect that seeks the cause.”
― Allan Bloom