Communists are frustrated capitalists.
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.
Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.
The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.
There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others – that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.
When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom – freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one’s religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.
Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
I always held my flower in a clenched fist.
Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.
A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.