The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.

The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.