Existence precedes and rules essence.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

Silence is the mother of truth.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Science is nothing but perception.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Nature does nothing in vain.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Real living is living for others.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

By indignities men come to dignities.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Every man is his own hell.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.