If Experience Teaches Us Anything At All,

Conscience Is A Mother-in-law Whose Visit Never Ends.

The State Is Not Force Alone. It Depends Upon The Credulity Of Man Quite As Much As Upon His Docility. Its Aim Is Not Merely To Make Him Obey, But Also To Make Him Want To Obey.

It [the State] Has Taken On A Vast Mass Of New Duties And Responsibilities; It Has Spread Out Its Powers Until They Penetrate To Every Act Of The Citizen, However Secret; It Has Begun To Throw Around Its Operations The High Dignity And Impeccability Of A State Religion; Its Agents Become A Separate And Superior Caste, With Authority To Bind And Loose, And Their Thumbs In Every Pot. But It Still Remains, As It Was In The Beginning, The Common Enemy Of All Well-disposed, Industrious And Decent Men.

The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal. Some Of Their Most Esteemed Inventions Have No Other Apparent Purpose - For Example, The Dinner Party Of More Than Two, The Epic Poem, And The Science Of Metaphysics.

It Is Common To Assume That Human Progress Affects Everyone - That Even The Dullest Man, In These Bright Days, Knows More Than Any Man Of, Say, The Eighteenth Century, And Is Far More Civilized. This Assumption Is Quite Erroneous. . . . The Great Masses Of Men, Even In This Inspired Republic, Are Precisely Where The Mob Was At The Dawn Of History. They Are Ignorant, They Are Dishonest, They Are Cowardly, They Are Ignoble. They Know Little If Anything That Is Worth Knowing, And There Is Not The Slightest Sign Of A Natural Desire Among Them To Increase Their Knowledge.