“Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!”

It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.

It’s not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It’s all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can’t get rid of them.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

A friend married is a friend lost.

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself — thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.

I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority

The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.

Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.

Every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life – he first individualizes.

I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.

I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say and what’s written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I’m to get to know myself and the world outside. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.