“The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic illusion. And the more he experienced the everyday life of the peasant, the more he denounced them as savage and barbaric.”

“A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.”

“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”

“There is nothing more awkward to look at, said Joejoe, than peasants in suits. They don't fit into them.”

“When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, he shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside,but the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail, for the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

“You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.”