No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.

To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.