Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

Give people pride and they'll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgement, or moral and aesthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free, we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoléon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering we search for martyrdom as for hidden treasure.

To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.

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