“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist. ”

“A Conformist is a man who declares, "It's true because others believe it" - but an Individualist is NOT a man who declares, "It's true because I believe it."An Individual declares, "I believe it because I see in reason that it is true.”

“like a weighted diver sinking in an oceanof mediocrity, under the pressure of men withgelatin eyes, rubber voices, spiral-shapedconvictions, non-committal souls and non-committinghands ...”

“For my purpose, the non-fiction form of abstract knowledge doesn’t interest me; the final, applied form of fiction, of story, does.”

“Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud--that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee--that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others.”

“But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.”

“The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance.”