“The conceit of literary intellectuals is to imagine that other people don't have ideas so that they can assume a superior status by having their own...”

“These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.”

“You can't sell people a new idea backed only by your authority. You have to have respect for the lives the people have led to this point and begin with them there; their experiences have led them to their assumptions and conceptions. As you identify and legitimate those experiences, you can help people identify their own primary needs in society. Then they can begin to imagine other people as having parallel needs.”

“Remember you don't own people, let them decide, choose and live. There is no inferiority and superiority; it is just your crazy imagination.”

“Few people...have had much training in listening. The training of most oververbalized professional intellectuals is in the opposite direction. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own views across, and we tend to find other people's speeches a tedious interruption of the flow of our own ideas.”

“We do not like the idea that any other creature can be better than we are. It is highly probable that if we ever have to face a superior race, we will die of it.”