At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists throughout the world with a general idea of the history and development of their particular science: there is none who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work.

Renunciation is submission to time.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.

If there were no affliction in this world we might think we were in paradise.