Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy.

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

Wherever we go, we come up against the human, a repulsive ubiquity before which we fall into stupor and revolt, a perplexity on fire.

I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.