There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.

He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented.

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.