Academic Quotes

“The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.”

“No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year -- ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge -- and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery.”

“Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out.”

“Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.”

“The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick.”

“Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity-and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.”

“Assuming that we have trained our imagination to denounce the past, we will not suffer much from unfulfilled wishes.”

“Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”

“There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term.”

“As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.”

“I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom.”

“Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary, insatiate monster.”

“Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy”

“The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.”

“The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.”

“The final reward of the dead - to die no more”

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”

“The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds.”

“The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.”

“Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.”

“A sure way to irritate people and to put evil thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting a long time. This makes them immoral.”

“One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”

“Plato was a bore.”

“When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.”

“THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly.”