Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.

It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.

Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.