It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.

I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.