Benito Mussolini had barely seized power in Italy before the Vatican made an official treaty with him, known as the Lateran Pact of 1929. Under the terms of this deal, Catholicism became the only recognized religion in Italy, with monopoly powers over matters such as birth, marriage, death, and education, and in return urged its followers to vote for Mussolini's party. Pope Pius XI described II Duce (“the leader”) as “a man sent by providence.”

If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular.

Exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside the baggy garments.

I don't think there's any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

Totalitarian is a cliché, dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried and tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring, they don't mind that they're obvious, their point is made.