The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind.

Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue.

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that... he is going to be a beginner all his life.

Perfect Freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work, and in that work does what he wants to do.

Art is community's medicine for that worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness

Nothing capable of being memorized is history.

What a man is ashamed of is always at bottom himself; and he is ashamed of himself at bottom always for being afraid.

Classical art stands for form; romantic art for content.

The children of each generation are taught to want what they are taught they must not have.

The chief business of seventeenth-century philosophy was to reckon with seventeenth-century science... the chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.

The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Empathy is a hand thick with scars offering you a bandage.

You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.

Hate is a lot like love. It's warm and fills you up until every part of you is tingling to release it.

The social pressure from friend and acquaintance to collude, to not notice racism, can be quite powerful.

Little by little, one travels far

The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.

I'm such a dude. I'm just like, 'All right, I have to get up in my monkey suit.' I'd rather be in jeans.

Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings. [Fr., La crainte fit les dieux; l'audace a fait les rois.]

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.