A great step forward was made the day men understood that in order to torment one another more efficiently they would have to gather together, to organize themselves into a society

The universal view melts things into a blur.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

An active mind didn't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers.

I know what you're gonna think, what you're gonna ask. Percy Jackson, why are you hanging from a Times Square billboard without your pants on, about to fall to your death?

I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.

I prefer a positive view of freedom, drawing on another tradition of political thinking that goes all the way back to the ancient Greek polis.

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

Applicant are just as important as race in determining college admissions.

A whole new series of technologies like biotechnology, virtual reality, and super-computerization are appearing now that are leading us away from our nature-based roots.

The fear of death is the fear of the end of an illusion; so long as the illusion persists so long will the fear remain.

If I've done anything I'm sorry for, I'm willing to be forgiven.

Sometimes, fear is good. Sometimes it's a good thing to have a little bit of a reality check.