We may express the historical function of the 'Abbasid Caliphate by describing it as a reintegration and resumption of the Achaemenian Empire - a rei… - Arnold J. Toynbee

...These intellectuals despise the general public for being non-professional and ignorant;
the public ignores the intellectuals , because it finds them unintelligible and unpractical. This mutual alienation is bad for the two of them and bad for society

All the great religions and philosophies declare that the proper goal for every living creature is to subdue and extinguish its natural self-centerness -to die unto itself.
They also declare unanimously that this effort is difficult because it is contrary to nature ,but that it is at the same time ,the only true way of self- fulfillment and therefore ,the only true way of attaining self-satisfaction and happiness

The art of handling university students is to make oneself appear, and this almost ostentatiously, to be treating them as adults...

The sunsets and sunrises of civilization are inevitably separated by intervals of isolated darkness. The night that followed the Roman sunset was long and uncertain, and the turmoil it brought consumed countless man. But mankind itself did not yield. With its gaze fixed on a distant future, it persevered. Until the first rays of a new dawn at long last penetrated the horizon.