Normal people have nothing to forget.

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

To hope is to contradict the future.

Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.

An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.