Henrik Ibsen

Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.

Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.

Don't use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'

What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man.

The pillars of truth and the pillars of freedom - they are the pillars of society.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - he first individualizes.

Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.

The devil is compromise.

These heroes of finance are like beads on a string; when one slips off, all the rest follow.

Do not use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see clearly a second time.

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.