In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.
Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.
For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.
The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.
Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.
To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults.
Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.
The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit.
The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.
Normality is death.
Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic.
Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.
The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.
In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.
Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.
The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.
An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.
Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.
