And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty

You are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so put intellect above everything.

I have in my own life merely carried to the extreme that which you have never ventured to carry even halfway ; and what's more, you've regarded your cowardice as prudence, and found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that, in fact, I may be even more "alive" than you are. Do take a closer look!

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

Man is bound to lie about himself

Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?