Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent. – Thomas Mann
For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide. – Thomas Mann
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. – Thomas Mann
An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates. – Thomas Mann