Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.

I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself

For he who loses all often easily loses himself.

It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.

Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn't always equal to oneself.

A scientist's life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary is always and only the unknown, the problem to be solved, the mystery to be clarified. It is never a matter of civil war; even though of different opinions, or of different political leanings, scientists dispute each other, they compete, but they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith "in the validity of Maxwell's or Boltzmann's equations," and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.

The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.