There has never been an 'original' sin: each is quite banal.

Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.

Narrow-minded provincialism: Sad to say but true - I am more interested in the mountain lions of Utah, the wild pigs of Arizona, than I am in the fate of all the Arabs of Araby, all the Wogs of Hindustan, all the Ethiopes of Abyssinia.

The feminist notion that the whole of human history has been nothing but a vast intricate conspiracy by men to enslave their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters presents us with an intellectual neurosis for which we do not yet have a name.

Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)

There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.