Henrik Ibsen Quotes

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.

Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority

To live is to war with trolls.

A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney.

I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

The strong must learn to be lonely.

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

Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

...every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

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

The greatest victory is defeat.

The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing.