“You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”
“Leadership isn't about power for the sake of power - not true leadership. Instead it deals with modeling behavior you want others to have, and with responsibility for being certain the people you lead are treated equitably, and with respect. Not an easy task. You can't make other people feel anything, or think anything; you can only try to teach them what you want them to feel and think and why you think they should act accordingly.”
“You can't save people from themselves. You can only try to wake them up.”
“People wrap themselves in their beliefs. And they do it in such a way that you can't set them free. Not even the truth will set them free.”
“You can't change people. You know that. You can't make them stop hating each other, or longing to blow up the world, not by walking through the rain and singing to a small guitar. Most you can do for them is pull them out of the womb, thump them on the backside and let them get on with it.”
“After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside--neither part of themselves, nor yet free...They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it.”