I am deeply ashamed at my failure to serve His Majesty.

I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.

The thought that I had been captured so soon, without having done anything for the revolution, made me feel ashamed. I thought: at least now, I must carry out my duty well under torture.

My ignorance was inexcusable, and it made me ashamed.

An intellectual who accommodates the ruling caste betrays the spirit. For the spirit is not conservative and grants no privileges. It dissolves; it equalizes; and it pushes through the ruins of hundreds of castles toward the final fulfillment of truth and justice, and their completion, even if it is the completion of death.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.

I do feel ashamed of having participated to the slightest even as a tool in those dark days. But I was obliged to serve the state to which I had taken an oath. It was a tragic fate.

It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

[About giving in during a struggle session:] To betray yourself or others is to give away some part of what makes you truly human. It is to dehumanize yourself. It is to cut off a piece of your soul, and that is the part of you that honors others, that makes relationships trustworthy and loyal. That's the part that makes you trustworthy instead of craven. So when you fail, you make yourself less trustworthy. If you betray somebody, everybody else see you betray somebody for your own skin. You're craven and you damage all of your relationships. You become less trustworthy as a person. It's the part of you that makes you loyal. [...] They make you give that away. They don't take it from you. Pay attention. They make you give it away. So that you debase and demoralize yourself. So that you cut yourself off from your social circles. So that you undermine your worthiness. And that demorizes others who are disappointed in you when they see it happen. You make yourself less trustworthy, less loyal, less human, so that you can escape a psychological pressure that they are putting on you.

If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.

I wonder how it would be if I let go and yielded myself to depravity.

I trust contrariness. ... I simply rebelled at being commanded.

There are moments when one is more ashamed of what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance.