There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Lying can never save us from another lie.

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.

The award is destined for scientists who do not fear to touch on some of the darkest aspects of being without betraying what they have achieved. On the contrary, they head in this direction.

Communism was overthrown by life by thought by dignity.

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.

The Gypsies are a litmus test not of democracy but of civil society.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served.

The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.

The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.

He gave to misery (all he had) a tear.