The Pledge

There is no greater cruelty than a genius stumbling over something idiotic.

The worst does sometimes happen. As men we have to count on that possibility, have to arm ourselves against it, and above all we have to realize that since absurdities necessarily occur, and nowadays manifest themselves with more and more forcefulness, we can prevent ourselves from being destroyed by them and can make ourselves relatively comfortable upon this earth only if we humbly include these absurdities in our thinking, reckon with the inevitable fractures and distortions of human reason when it attempts honestly to deal with reality. We have to realize that without this knowledge we are in danger of making an absolute of absurdity, of taking it “in itself,” as though it were established somewhere outside the human mind; we would then be forced to regard the absurd as an error which it was within our power to avoid; on the basis of which illusion we might find ourselves executing the whole world out of a kind of defiant morality one we undertook to try to establish a flawless rational structure, for its very flawless perfection would be its deadly mendacity and a sign of the most frightful blindness.

You're choosing madness as a method, and it takes courage to do that, no question; extreme positions impress people generally these days; but if this method does not lead to its goal, I'm afraid that in the end, all you'll be left with is the madness.

Every kind of absurdity is possible between a man and a woman.

This case didn't feel right; everything had somehow gone wrong; I didn't know exactly how, but I felt it.

Our laws are based only on probability, on statistics, not on causality; they apply to the general rule, not the particular case.

Every word mattered to them. Because Matthäi was taking them seriously, they took him seriously too.

Ma voi scrittori ve ne infischiate. Voi non cercate di misurarvi con la realtà, che ci elude sempre, ma costruite un mondo in cui tutto è spiegabile. Un mondo simile può anche essere perfetto, d'accordo, però è una menzogna. Lasciate perdere la perfezione se volete progredire verso le cose, verso la realtà, come si addice a degli uomini; altrimenti statevene lì a baloccarvi con i vostri inutili esercizi di stile.

La nostra ragione getta una luce insufficiente sul mondo. Nella penombra dei suoi confini si insedia tutto ciò che è paradossale. Guardiamoci dal considerare "cosa in sé" i fantasmi che ne derivano, come se fossero situati al di fuori dell'animo umano, o peggio ancora: non cadiamo nell'inganno di ritenerli un errore evitabile, inganno che ci indurrebbe a condannare il mondo sulla base di una morale ottusa e gretta qualora tentassimo di imporre un modello di razionalità assoluta, perchè proprio la sua assoluta perfezione sarebbe una esiziale menzogna e il segno di una assoluta cecità.