35 quotes
"The rich don't have to kill to eat." – [30]
We are, by nature, so futile that distraction alone can prevent us from dying altogether.[17]
- (Lola): Only mad men and cowards refuse to go to the war, when their homeland is in danger! - (Bardamu): So, hurrah for the mad men and the cowards! ― [6]
Then I fell sick, I was delirious, driven mad by fear, they said at the hospital. Maybe so. The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not.
I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist other genuine realizations of our deepest character than war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare.[39]
Your system of producing wealth, factories, mines, cooperatives will fall apart, like everything else, under the attacks of the people, in the delirious, popular boulimia. [101]
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)
The populace is a true museum of all the stupidities of the ages: it swallows everything, it admires everything, it preserves everything, it defends everything, it understands nothing. [145]
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)
Beating up Jews (by Jew I mean anyone with a Jew for a grandparent, even one!) won’t help, I’m sure, that’s just going around in circles, it’s a joke, you’re only beating around the bush if you don’t grab them by the strings [tefillins], if you don’t strangle them with them.
Les Beaux Draps (1941)
In democratic politics it is money that commands. And the money is Jewish. [180]
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)
Since the end of the period of belief, leaders exalt every defect, every kind of sadism, and gain all the more through their vices: vanity, ambition, war, death in a word.[16]
Mea culpa; suivi de la vie et l'oeuvre de Semmelweis (1937)
The rich are inebriate in another way and cannot contrive to grasp these frenzied longings for security. To be rich is another form of intoxication: it spells forgetfulness. In fact, that is what one wants riches for: to forget.
I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage. ― [6]
You [Jews] terrify no one. The sun sinks, you swank about to the right, to the left. Europe forms up against you. [294]
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)
The one who talks about the future is a rascal. The present is the only thing that matters. To invoke one’s posterity is to make a speech to maggots. [4]
The natives, by and large, had to be driven to work with clubs, they preserved that much dignity, whereas the whites, perfected by public education, worked of their own free will.[12]