Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

Give people pride and they'll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgement, or moral and aesthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free, we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoléon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering we search for martyrdom as for hidden treasure.

The future belongs to the learners-not the knowers.

Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life