A trial cannot be conducted by announcing the general culpability of a civilization. Only the actual deeds which, at least, stank in the nostrils of the entire world were brought to judgment.

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.

I am too far away from what I love and my distance is without remedy.

The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.