It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.

We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.

There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.

Kierkegaard also said that truth is `subjective`. By this he did not mean it doesn't matter what we think or believe. He meant that the really important truths are personal. Only these truths are `true for me`.

A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.