Endurance means that failures have to be both accepted and refused: accepted as a sign that fresh efforts now need to be made, and refused as a signa… - R. W. K. Paterson

His [the plebeian’s] aim is not to teach, to correct error, but to disturb, to unsettle, to sow disillusioning seeds in the hope of spreading disillusionment as a rooted attitude of mind.

One of the most prevalent fallacies is the so-called genetic fallacy, which tempts men to argue that the first lowly origins of a thing demonstrate what it essentially is even in its most highly developed forms. Psychoanalysis and anthropologists have sometimes specialized in tracing the golden fruits to their grubby roots, and they have had some success in convincing the credulous that greatness is only triviality writ large. A kindred fallacy—which to state is to expose—teaches that the surest way of understanding a type is to inspect its poorest instances.

There are individuals … who propagate lessons inviting self-abasement, bitterness, self-waste, and cynicism; there are those who high pride, like that of Lucifer, is to dethrone everything they perceive as superior and summoning men to what lies above them.