Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

People's fates are simplified by their names.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

A crowd exists so long as it has an unattained goal.

The crowd is the same everywhere in all periods and cultures it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin education and language.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

If it weren't for women, men would still be wearing last week's socks.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

To a smart girl men are no problem - they're the answer.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

There is always a type of man who says he loves his fellow men, and expects to make a living at it.

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.