If we were not good at flood protection, the Netherlands would not exist.

You can go on making the dikes higher and higher . . . but if they fail, the effect is going to be much worse.

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.

By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.