I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.

To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.