Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.

The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

All oppression creates a state of war.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

I still loved Naoko. Bent and twisted as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else.

While I live my life expecting to live, others expect that they might die. The rules of the world are not the same for all of us.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

And where was happiness if it sprung not from the soil? Where contentment if it dwelt not near to Nature?

Meritocracy is a good thing. Whenever possibly, people should be judged based on their work and results, not superficial qualities.

You know, when someone has been crying, something gets left in the air. It's not something you can see or smell, or feel. Or draw. But it's there.

A primary flaw in my psychology is that I'll give people a hundred yards' worth of rope with which to hang themselves, but once they reach that hundred-yard line, I strangle them to death with it.

Deal with difficult tasks while they are easy. Act on large issues while they are small.

Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

Be creative. Men only learnt how to fly when they stopped imitating birds.