But the creative person is subject to a different, higher law than mere national law. Whoever has to create a work, whoever has tobring about a discovery or deed which will further the cause of all of humanity, no longer has his home in his native land but rather in his work.

Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.

We can't forever be spending our lives paying for political follies that never gave us anything but always took from us, and I amcontent with the narrowest metes and bounds provided I have peace and quiet for work.

For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.

Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can't claim any special place for myself except that, as an Austrian, a Jew, writer, humanist and pacifist, I have always been precisely in those places where the effects of the thrusts were most violent.

Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent.

The free, independent spirit who commits himself to no dogma and will not decide in favor of any party has no homestead on earth.