Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."

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

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.

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.