Between two beings there is always the barrier of words. Man has so many ears and speaks so many languages. Should it nevertheless be possible to understand one another? Is real communication possible if word and language betray us every time? Shall, in the end, only the language of tanks and guns prevail and not human reason and understanding?

Pavlov's findings were that some animals learned more quickly if rewarded (by affection, by food, by stroking) each time they showed the right response, while others learned more quickly when the penalty for not learning was a painful stimulus.

Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls [are] a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind.

The tension of a mysterious danger is even more unbearable than danger itself. People hate the vacuum of an unknown situation. They want security. They even prefer war to the insecure expectation of a war with its threat of enemy surprise. This vague fearful expectation acts on their fantasies. They anticipate all kinds of mysterious dangers; they begin to provoke them. It is the evocation of fear and danger in order to escape the tension of insecurity.

If men can be made to understand that society, with its rigid codes and stratifications, is in its confused infancy rather than in the apex of its development; if they can be made to understand that the conflicts and contradictions of society can only be resolved by scientific long-range planning-then we will succeed in maintaining what civilization we have and drive onward to greater culture.

It's among the intelligentsia that we often find the glib compulsion to explain everything and to understand nothing.

Puzzlement and doubt are, however, already crimes in the totalitarian state. The mind that is open for questions is open for dissent. In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorize, to salivate when the bell rings.