“Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.”

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.

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.

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.

For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.

If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It’s also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

God is the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.

Freely we serve, because freely we love.

I would willingly go more primitive if it were necessary to preserve my freedom.

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.