Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

• Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
• The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
• The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
• Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.
• Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
• Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
• I can, therefore I am.
• Humility is attentive patience.
• To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
• Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.