In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

We fear our neighbor's hostile mood because we are afraid that this mood will lead him to penetrate our secrets.

The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.

You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?

What is originality? To see something that is as yet without a name, that is as yet impossible to designate, even though it staresus in the face. The way it usually is with people, it is a thing's name that makes it perceptible to them in the first place.--For the most part, the original ones have also been the name-givers.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.