“The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.”

“No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives. The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be. He is not the result of a special design, a will, a purpose; he is not the subject of an attempt to attain an 'ideal of man' or an 'ideal of happiness' or an 'ideal of morality'--it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking...One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole--there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, condemn the whole...”

“If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.”

“An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift”

“To this day the vision of the world which comes most naturally to me is one in which “we two” or “we few” (and in a sense “we happy few”) stand together against something stronger and larger.”

“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”