If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

The happy marriage, which is the only proper nursery, is indissoluble. The unhappy marriage, which perpetually tells the child a bogey-man story about life, ought to be dissolved.

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

Christianity must be regarded not as a final revelation but as a phase of revelation.

To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere.