Thomas Mann

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.

The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.

One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?

The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.

An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.

Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

Isn't it grand, isn't it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love - from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in ambiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life.

For the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.