Still, all this time, I was only barely aware that my subconscious was putting together a layout of the house. It wasn't that I expected to need one,… - Steven Brust

I will always hold to those principles by which I have been raised… To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity… To hold myself to higher standards of conduct than I hold another. To never strike without cause, and, when there is cause, to strike for the heart...

Stalin is the perfect example of what I was talking about. To simply call him corrupt tells us nothing useful. What circumstances put him into power? What objective pressures, as well as subjective characteristics, led him to make the decisions he made? I'm currently reading Trotsky's writings from 1932 (scary how accurately he predicts the way WWII would play out), and analyzing the details of why Stalin did as he did is far more complex and useful than just, 'power corrupts'. And it is even more true for the other great dictators of the 20th Century: I don’t think you can even say that Hitler and Mussolini were corrupt: they came to power in order to do the very things they did.

A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.