Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

As a human being Plato mingles regal, exclusive, and self-contained features with melancholy compassion.

I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?