In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.
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I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.
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A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth -- science -- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
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The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
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The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery
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I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conlusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleages, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
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Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
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I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
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I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
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A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.
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The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.
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All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
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All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless.
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What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
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'If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.'
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An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur
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Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
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Happy families are all alike every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries
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Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
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War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
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Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
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If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.
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True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
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Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment and its wars.
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And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.
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We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
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As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
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