We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.