Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

The childhood of the individual and the race is full of fears, and panic-stricken attempts to avert what is feared by placating the gods with painful sacrifices.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

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.

... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.