Quotation:
"It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive."
More quotes from: Thomas Mann
- "A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. "
- "A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which ..."
- "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other ..."
- "All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life. "
- "An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, ..."
- "Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion. "
- "Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist. "
- "Extraordinary creature! So close a friend, and yet so remote. "
- "Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate. "
- "If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell ..."
- "It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. "
- "Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject. "
- "The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life. "
- "The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an ..."
- "There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, ..."
- "This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected - ..."
- "This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty - this city, half fairy tale and ..."
- "Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare ..."
- "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. "


