"Revolutions demand enormous sacrifices and, at the same time, create a new need to change the world again."

"A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory."

"Without tolerance, our world turns into hell."

"Justice is horrible."

"The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual."

"When death has you by the throat, you don't mince words."

"Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is."

"The problems of all of humanity can only be solved by all of humanity."

"A story has been thought through to the end when it has taken the worst possible turn."

"I am a man, and God is hiding from us humans. We are unable to see Him, we can only search for Him."

"It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury."

"Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them."

"News reports don't change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news."

"Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man."

"We are the world."

"There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them."

"The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control."

"Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason."

"The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness."

"Human life is beyond comprehension."

"A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder."

"The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder."

"Power is paradoxical."

"Who sows fear, reaps weapons."

"So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right."

"This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?"

"Today's Communism can survive only if it abandons the myth of an infallible party, if it continues to think, and if it becomes democratic."

"The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint."

"Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, but the human being."

"Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it."

"People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies."

"There are thoughts we must not think."

"Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands."

"It is inhuman to continue a war which could easily be ended."

"One does not set fire to a world which is already lost."

"The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all."

"You can't take back an act you were able to think."

"We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior."

"Truth is always a delusion."

"Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it."

"For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence."

"There is a moment when nothing can be wiped out and left behind any more, when there is only reality and reality is horrifying."

"Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal."

"For a person who is dying only eternity counts."

"Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand."

"Pretend to be dumb, that's the only way to reach old age."

"World history is tragic."

"In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect."

"Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality."

"The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said."