What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility - of being unable to undo what one has done - is the faculty of forgiving.

For the possibilities of being different from what one is are infinite. Once one has negated oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices.