The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.

A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.

Of all forms of fiction, autobiography is the most gratuitous.

Death is the ultimate negative.

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.