“People are too durable, that’s their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.”

What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

The mobilization order is already written out. Every day, to earn my daily bread I go to the market where lies are bought Hopefully I take up my place among the sellers.

You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

If you wan to steal money, don’t rob a bank – open one.

Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.

General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.

Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences. …

Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.

It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.

Science knows only one commandment – contribute to science.

The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.

The righteous one has no sense of humor.

There must always be some who are brighter and some who are stupider, the latter make up for it by being better workers.

The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but “accessory” in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but “accessory” in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.

Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think we can requite them; when that possibility is far exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of gratitude.

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.

And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!

Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.