A poor degenerate from the ape, Whose hands are four, whose tail's a limb, I contemplate my flaccid shape And know I may not rival him Save with my mind.

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.