When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.

Truth becomes untruth if uttered by your enemy

Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.