The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.

Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

We can be satisfied with moderate confidence in ourselves and with a moderately good opinion of ourselves, but the faith we have in a holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising.

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.