Why runners make lousy communists. In a word, individuality. It's the one characteristic all runners, as different as they are, se...em to share.... Stick with it. Push yourself. Keep running. And you'll never lose that wonderful sense of individuality you now enjoy. Right, comrade?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Power corrupts ... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power ... far from being a... characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they re...cruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been "spoiled" by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then t...he best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highes...t point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct th...eir lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings. ... they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The traveller, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he ask...s himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have every characteristic of a night person--a distaste for bosses, a hatred of the expected, an obsession with gaining an ultim...ately nonexistent freedom--every quality except one. I can't stay awake after a while. I fall asleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of ...external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »