“When the fact that one is a total nonentity who’s done nothing more outstanding than eating, sleeping, and chatting with neighbors becomes a fact worthy of pride, of announcement to the world and of diligent study by millions of readers – the fact that one has built a cathedral becomes unrecordable and unannounceable. A matter of perspectives and relativity. The distance permissible between the extremes of any particular capacity is limited. The sound perception of an ant does not include thunder.”

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned.”

“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.”

“Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand.”

“I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity--the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.”

“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.”