I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

To accomplish nothing and die of the strain

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.

The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.