So to all who are situated as I am, I would say – Grow up as fast as you can.

Those persons who refuse to act as symbols of society’s folk ways, as counters in the game of society’s ordaining, are outlawed.

Taste is the only morality.

A cultivation of the powers of one’s personality is one of the greatest needs of life.

The ironic life is a life keenly alert, keenly sensitive, reacting promptly with feelings of liking or dislike to each bit of experience, letting none of it pass without interpretation and assimilation, a life full and satisfying – indeed a rival of the religious life.

For the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm.

If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you have no heart, but if you are still an idealist by the time you are thirty, you don’t have a head.

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.