It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.
A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the physical, tangible existence of animals.
For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.
To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.
The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.
Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.
The way God has been thought of for thousands of years is no longer convincing; if anything is dead, it can only be the traditional thought of God.
The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
According to bourgeois standards, those who are completely unlucky and unsuccessful are automatically barred from competition, which is the life of society. Good fortune is identified with honor, and bad luck with shame.
The blessing of life as a wholecan never be found in work.
There always comes a point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive.
The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday’s executioner becomes today’s victim.
Philosophy is called upon to compensate for the frustrations of politics and, more generally, of life itself.
Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.