The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes . . . - grandiose thoughts in embryo.

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward."

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that the former expresses his idea most fully in death while the latter really enjoys the bitterness of failure.