Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering

If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.

The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.

The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.