I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
"Doctor Zhivago". Book by Boris Pasternak. Paraphrase of the 1958 translation, as quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978), 1957.