“The people who hitched to Katmandu (and are doubtlessly still doing so, despite the usual reports of official prohibitions) seem to me to be of this sort, displaced persons, aimless couples without papers. They are ill-suited to play the role which they are conventionally given; that of proletarian playboys, outriders of a modern sub-culture, who intend, mainly through will-power, to end injustice and rule the world. For the most part they have chosen to be the sole inhabitants of private worlds, and their aspirations will not be found in the bazaars of the international youth movement, or of the global underground or any other such tentative organizations.”

“The people of North America have little idea of religion, but they have strict public morality. The Latin people are without morality but they are highly religious.”

“But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”“Lee—”“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.I’d do it for you too, Lee’s Noise says.And I know he would.But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?So who’s right?”

“If the world wants you, it's gonna keep on coming till it gets you. And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?”

“I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium... - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is ... inhuman... the only feelings I have are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.... Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

“The commitment to enlarged thought is morally and politically significant in that it fosters the ‘ability to think without rules’, to cultivate judgement and conscience capable of thinking through the purposes and consequences of our actions from different perspectives, without proceeding in automatic fashion through obedience to pre-existing social conventions.”

“...I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.”