“Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.”

However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.

If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.

Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.

A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.

The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.

It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.

Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

To drive out the darkness, bring in the light.

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.

The motive power of democracy is love.

Despite the fear, we have to choose to jump or be forced to live with regret.

Don’t force yourself into crevices that are much too small For your big, wild heart.

You cannot force a vine to grow the fruit of an apple tree, for the sake of your love of apples. What fruit can it possibly bear?

Follow the path that forces your soul to glow and your heart to shine through your eyes.

Revolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of argument and reasoning.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

Baby, tonight prepare yourself for a perfect storm, I will come over you like a hurricane with a terrifying force.