My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

Everyone who enjoys supposes that the tree was concerned with the fruit, but it was really concerned with the seed. -In this lies the difference between all those who create and those who enjoy.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

And nobody lies as much as the indignant do.

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!

Science offends the modesty of all real women. It makes them feel as though it were an attempt to peek under their skin--or, worseyet, under their dress and ornamentation!