There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.
I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
Don’t use that foreign word ‘ideals.’ We have that excellent native word ‘lies.’
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, ‘I have it,’ merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.
In great memories there lies the seed of growth.
Oh, yes – you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side – unfortunately; but right it has not.
What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.
It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrafice his honor for the one he loves. Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!
And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!
I’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.
It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.
But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.
So to conduct one’s life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
There is nothing so enervating and exhausting as this hopeless waiting. I dare say this is only a transition period. I will and shall have a victory some day. If the powers that be have shown me so little favor as to place me in this world and make me what I am, the result must be accordingly.
Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.
Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.
A friend married is a friend lost.