Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.