If there is no God, then I am God.
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
If God is dead, everything is allowed.
Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
The formula ‘Two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.
Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.
Hell is the inability to love.
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.
My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.