Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.

How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force!

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!

I want to know whether you are a person devoted to creating or to exchanging in some respect or other: as a creator you belong tothe free, as an exchanger you are their slave and instrument.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Those who are failures from the start, downtrodden, crushed -- it is they, the weakest, who must undermine life among men, who call into question and poison most dangerously our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves.