Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn’t – doesn’t live at all.
I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.
Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.
I think it’s a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.
Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont.
You don’t know how hard I’ve tried to be left standing all by myself.
She’s a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn’t be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.
People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.
It’s not a question of who will allow me to do it, it’s a question of who will stop me.
Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist’s sense of his own Inferiority.
A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.
It’s such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don’t even know that you’re being subtle and vicious.
And man will go on. Man, not men.
Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.
That’s a cute sentence: the years to come. Why are you so sure they’re coming?
What is kinder – to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance – or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?
Don’t worry. They’re all against me. But I have one advantage: they don’t know what they want. I do.