You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer

We take for granted the need to escape the self. Yet the self can also be a refuge. In totalitarian countries the great hunger is for private life. Absorption in the minutiae of an individual existence is the only refuge from the apocalyptic madhouse staged by maniacal saviors of humanity.

The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending — for making a show — and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing mass spectacle.

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.