Life is a biography, not a series of disconnected moments, more or less pleasurable but increasingly tedious and unsatisfying unless one imposes a purposive pattern upon them.

There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

Nonjudgmentalism is not really nonjudgmental. It is the judgment that . . . everything is the same, nothing is better. This is as barbaric and untruthful a doctrine as has yet emerged from the fertile mind of man.

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.

Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

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