"Why not be content without philosophizing, with what we find in the world, with what already is, what stands there clear before us? For this simple reason: all that there is, there in front of us, given to us, present and clear, is in its very essence a mere piece, a bit, a fragment, the stump of something absent. And we cannot see it without sensing and missing the part that is not there. In every given being, every datum of the world, we find its essential fracture line, its character as a part and only a part; we see the scar of its ontological mutilation...its nostalgia for the bit that is lacking, its divine discontent."

"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will...The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated."