Do you call yourself Free? It is your ruling thought that I would hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would first of all have had to forgo judging and justice : a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love.

All great men are play actors of their own ideal.

The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in.