Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.

We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.

And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.

We [writers] must know that we can never escape the common misery and that our only justification, if indeed there is a justification, is to speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.