Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument

... the genius never makes anything new, but always something that is just different, and the average talents provide him the possibility within which his genius condenses into achievements.

And since the possession of qualities presupposes that one takes a certain pleasure in their reality, all this gives us a glimpse of how it may all of a sudden happen to someone who cannot summon up any sense of reality — even in relation to himself — that one day he appears to himself as a man without qualities.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

He who is allowed to do as he likes will soon run his head into a brick wall out of sheer frustration.