Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.