Nationalism is fraught with dangers, of course, but so is the blind refusal to recognize that attachment to one’s own culture, traditions, and histor… - Theodore Dalrymple

Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.

When the cold war ended, I thought, as no doubt did many others, that the age of ideology was over. Again like many others, I underestimated man’s need for transcendence, which, in the absence of religion or high culture, he is most likely to find in a political or social cause.

With carefully nourished resentment, a man can go through his life blaming someone or something else for his failures. This enables him to be a failure and to feel morally superior to the world at the same time.