A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.

Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.