“History has no meaning.”

What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

The conspiracy theory of society, comes from abandoning God and then asking: “Who is in his place?”

It is complete nihilism to propose laying down arms in a world where atom bombs are around. It is very simple: there is no way of achieving peace other than with weapons.

The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity.

Theories are nets cast to catch what we call ‘the world’: to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer.

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but hell.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

It is not the consciousness of man that determines his existence – rather, it is his social existence that determines his consciousness.

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.

The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world.

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

You are the only you that has ever been created in the history of the universe.

You can make history, or you will be vilified by it.

The most revolutionary statement in history is love thine enemy.

History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.

I hope another generation of children don’t have to grow up without understanding the historical context for contemporary racism.⁣

Science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.