“Break the character and independence of your man and you will have an obedient trooper.”

“Prisons are built to break men, and when men are broken society has consummated its revenge”

“A man lives his life only when he is marching, i thought, when he keeps marching onwards at any price. When he stops marching onwards, he decays. The joy of life is the joy of the experience that comes from feeling one's own strength.”

“I would not have shied away from an assignment to sail a canoe around Cape Horn or to take charge of the government of Afghanistan.”

“We were the unflinching prisoners of a grandiose make-believe, we who looked upon ourselves as heard-headed materialists. We dismissed the distress of today, the human wreckage scattered all about us, the terror and militarism prevailing in the country with the stereotyped belief that we were marching forward with great strides.”

“Blut muss fliessen”

“Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are.”