Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from obsolete ways of living and inconsequential talk.

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another.

The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole.

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

There might be a fact of the greatest significance reported by Thucydides which will only be recognized as such a hundred years from now.

History is still in large measure poetry to me.

True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much.

Only a fairy tale calls a constant condition 'happiness'.

Learning how to stand on your own feet and avoid leaning on somebody's shoulder will literally help you to sharpen your knife in this era.

Always care about value—not about price.

Happiness has its source in positive feelings, while joy has its source in Jesus.

Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.

Each man had come to know the other's caricature as a lie.

About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.

The general of a large army may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant.

All power is in essence power to deny mortality.

I can go everywhere and no one recognises me.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.