"What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be."

"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

"Common sense is the folklore of philosophy."

"This phrase isn't my own; it's from the pen of French writer Romain Rolland. But people credit me with having said it all the time—so frequently, in fact, that I might as well have said it myself."