Henrik Ibsen
Oh yes, right—right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?Collection: Your Side
I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.Collection: Lying
Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.Collection: Thinking
Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.Collection: Men
Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!Collection: Pounds
The majority never has right on its side.Collection: Majority
Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.Collection: Love
Oh, yes--you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side--unfortunately; but right it has not.Collection: Yes You Can
I'm inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.Collection: Mother
So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.Collection: Life
In the decisive moment I won the victory over myself. I chose to live. And believe me, it takes courage to choose life under those circumstances.Collection: Life
The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.Collection: Spiritual
And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!Collection: Running
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.Collection: Power
You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.Collection: People
Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.Collection: Happiness
When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.Collection: Life
Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.Collection: Men
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.Collection: Writing
The starving poet business is no good nowadays.Collection: Poet
Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.Collection: Mother
Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.Collection: Nature
This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!Collection: Happiness
NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I'm to get to know myself and the world outside. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.Collection: Two
I believe that, before all else, I'm a human being, no less than you.Collection: Believe
To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?Collection: World
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.Collection: Poetry
Each bird must sing with his own throat.Collection: Voice
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?Collection: Freedom
Public opinion is an extremely mutable thingCollection: Public Opinion
To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mindCollection: War
There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.Collection: Home
You don't get nothing for nothing in this life.Collection: This Life
The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.Collection: Literature
It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.Collection: Inspirational
If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.Collection: Procrastination
A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.Collection: Marriage
But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.Collection: Mother
The greatest victory is defeat.Collection: Greatest Victory
I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.Collection: Mind
Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.Collection: Money
Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.Collection: Happiness
It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this lifeCollection: Spirit
Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a manCollection: Men
You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.Collection: Pleasant
Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.Collection: Writing
The strongest men are the most alone.Collection: Men
To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.Collection: Uplifting
Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.Collection: Writing