No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres.

All that the world most needs today, is combined in the most seductive manner in his art, — the three great stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artificiality and innocence (idiocy).

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

I teach the No to all that makes weak--that exhausts. I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that pride.

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.

Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of sincerity to oneself