The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.

Life is full of what-ifs, many of which could easily have been realities, had just a few things been different.

Accepting that the world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity does not and should not stop people from being pretty sure about a lot of things.

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

We interest others by the misfortune we spread around us.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.