Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed.

Glamour, that trans-human aura or power to attract imitation, is a kind of vessel into which dreams are poured, and some vessels are simply worthier than others... A beautiful woman can turn heads but real glamour has a deeper pull... Glamour is the power to rearrange people's emotions, which, in effect, is the power to control one's environment.

It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

Willie was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life?. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake.

A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.