Fausto Cercignani Quotes

Your identity is like your shadow: not always visible and yet always present.

Unlike money, hope is all: for the rich as well as for the poor.

Do not confuse fantasy with imagination; the former consumes itself in daydreaming, the latter stimulates creativity in the arts and in the sciences.

When you would suffocate or ignore dissent, remember how many times you dissented.

A secret remains a secret until you make someone promise never to reveal it.

Sometimes true tolerance requires an extraordinary strength, which we are often too weak to exercise.

Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement.

If you are living in the past or in the future, you will never find a meaning in the present.

It is certainly a good thing always to forgive with generosity, but it is no doubt just never to forget the wrongs received: they belong to the route that leads to inner maturity.

Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them.

Inner freedom demands the rejection of any imposition that injures our dignity.

Your will cannot always choose the path; very often the route is determined by chance or by the will of others.

As long as his strength permits, the poor mortal must always climb new mountains.

We learn a lot from the mistakes of others, but even more from our own.