Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.

... We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.

Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves.

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose a future.

Believe me, the hardest thing for a man to give up is that which he really doesn't want, after all.

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.