To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have.

We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.