Henrik Ibsen

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
– Henrik Ibsen

To seek one’s goals and to drive toward it, stealing one’s heart, is most uplifting.
– Henrik Ibsen

The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority.
– Henrik Ibsen

Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is
won.
– Henrik Ibsen

It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still
possible.
– Henrik Ibsen

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.
– Henrik Ibsen

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.
– Henrik Ibsen

You don’t get nothing for nothing in this life.
– Henrik Ibsen

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.
– Henrik Ibsen

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

The devil is compromise.
– Henrik Ibsen

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.
– Henrik Ibsen

Courage… oh yes! If only one had that – then life might be livable in spite of everything.
– Henrik Ibsen

I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
– Henrik Ibsen

There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the
sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.
– Henrik Ibsen

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?
– Henrik Ibsen

Many a man can save himself if he admits he’s done wrong and takes his punishment.
– Henrik Ibsen

People who don’t know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get
themselves buried, and not waste time about it.
– Henrik Ibsen

There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.
– Henrik Ibsen

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
– Henrik Ibsen

I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as you are.
– Henrik Ibsen

When we dead awaken… we see that we have never lived.
– Henrik Ibsen

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – these are the pillars of society.
– Henrik Ibsen

Neither moral concepts nor art forms can expect to live forever. How much are we obliged to
hold on to? Who can guarantee that 2 plus 2 don’t add up to 5 on Jupiter?
– Henrik Ibsen

An unromantic poem I mean to make
Of one who only lives for duty’s sake.
– Henrik Ibsen

A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and
truth.
– Henrik Ibsen

He who possesses liberty otherwise than as an aspiration possesses it soulless, dead. One of
the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding.
Therefore, the man who stands still in the midst of the struggle and says, “I have it,” merely
shows by so doing that he has just lost it. Now this very contentedness in the possession of
a dead liberty is characteristic of the so-called State, and, as I have said, it is not a good
characteristic.
– Henrik Ibsen

To live is to battle the demons
in the heart as well as the brain.
To write is to preside at
judgement day over one’s self.
– Henrik Ibsen

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

The State has its root in time, and will ripe and rot in time.
– Henrik Ibsen