He who matures early lives in anticipation.

The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.

A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.