A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.

Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.

A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.