A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.

To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.