Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.

There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid?

The need always to lie and always to avoid the truth stripped everyone of what Custine called 'the two greatest gifts of God-the soul and the speech which communicates it.' People became hypocritical, cunning, mistrustful, cynical, silent, cruel, and indifferent to the fate of others as a result of the destruction of their own souls.

I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.