When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid

A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.

One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty

Modern jazz: Variations on a non-existent theme

However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful or even better fed than his companions.

The intelligentsia ...was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses.