“Tools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.”

Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.

The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.

The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.

Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.

The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.

The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.

Evil, as she saw it, need not be committed only by demonic monsters but—with disastrous effect—by morons and imbeciles as well, especially if, as we see in our own day, their deeds are sanctioned by religious authority.

Men in plural, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.

For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army.

Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.

Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

I don’t like long tours. I find it much easier to go out for a short spurt every month.

Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.

Charting your own course isn’t just more necessary than ever before. It’s also much easier – and much more fun.

I’ll write my secrets in the sand next to driftwood and seashells then let the waves wash them away. Wishing forgetting was that easy. – secrets in the sand.

Doing the easy thing makes you popular. Doing the hard thing makes you a leader.

I let go of all fear and doubt, and life becomes simple and easy for me