"In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour."
"The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained."
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Source: Stefan Zweig, Friderike Maria Burger Winternitz Zweig, Henry G. Alsberg (1954). “Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942”
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"Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore."
"Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent."
"It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one's own existence."
"Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny."
"All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings."