One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.

Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

What Europe owes to the Jews? - Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness - and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows - perhaps glows out.

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and intimate things.

Where one despises, one cannot wage war.