[B]ureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. - Mary McCarthy

Life for the European is a career; for the American, it is a hazard.

The discovery that one cannot convince an opponent and that it is hopeless to go on trying involves a confession of subjectivity that deprives the world of meaning.

People sometimes say that they envied the Communists because they were so "sure." In my case this was not exactly it; I was sure, too, intellectually speaking, as far as I went. That is, I had a clear mind and was reasonably honest, while many of the Communists I knew were pathetically fogged up. In any case, my soul was not particularly hot for certainties.