Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

We do not judge the people we love.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.