If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all -- what then would life be but despair?

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life is nothing to write home about either.

Ordinary people fancy they see something rigid, complete and permanent; in truth, however, light and dark, bitter and sweet are attached to each other and interlocked at any given moment like wrestlers of whom sometimes the one, sometimes the other is on top.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

The universe gives birth to communicating participators. Communicating participators give meaning to the universe … With such a concept goes the endless series of receding reflections one sees in a pair of facing mirrors.

It is not 'history' which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. / The riddle does not exist. / If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.