“Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.”
“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”
“The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.”
“Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.”
“Squeeze human nature into a straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear!”
“An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.”
“The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back.”
“Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.”
“How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.”
“My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.”
“The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.”
“War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.”
“A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.”
“He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.”
“Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.”
“Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.”
“Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.”
“A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.”
“Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.”
“The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.”
“When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.”
“Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?”
“Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning.”
“A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.”
“Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.”
“If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.”
“Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.”
“Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.”
“The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.”
“It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.”