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.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

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

The ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.