To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap out of nothing - any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and metropolitanism: human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities.

The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.

If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants.

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.

I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert.

One must know how to conserve oneself - the best test of independence.