What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and were brothers.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.

There are such repulsive faces in the world.

In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.

Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.

We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of my life.