What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.

One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.

Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us.

I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea; for this I bid my sails search and search.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.