“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

“Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.”

“How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?”

“What looks like a man is only a representation of a man who does what the organization requires. He (or it) does not run the machine; he tends it.”

“What he himself is, whether he is or is not, he does not know so much as this.”
Ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

“You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher.”

“The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.”

“A painter may know what he does not want.
But woe betide him if he wants to know
what he does want! A painter is lost if he finds himself.
The fact that he has succeeded in not finding
himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only
'achievement.”

“What does he do, Clarice? What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. How do we begin to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day.”