But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.

When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

An attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life.