There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

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

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

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

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.