Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.

I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sapand seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it--and tries to live off philosophy.

I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.

What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.