“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors.”

“A nation ashamed of it's ancestry will be despised by it's posterity.”

“Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.”

“Blind patriotism on the part of its leaders and citizens, far from leading a nation to greatness, will only bring ruin, disgrace and misery to the nation and its people. Self-delusion isn’t complementary to greatness. A nation will be great only if it has the courage to face up to its own shortcomings, and not be blind to its own wrongdoings, failings, mistakes, imperfections and impurities.”

“It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.”

“Class consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite--the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron ...”