It is, of course, a common prejudice that censorship is bad for art and therefore always unjustified: though, if this were so, mankind would have little in the way of an artistic heritage and we should now be living in an artistic golden age.

Political abstractions can disguise or change the meaning of the most elementary realities.

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it-in other words, by becoming civilized-that men become fully human.

It is better to be opposed by an enemy than to be adrift in meaninglessness, for the simulacrum of an enemy lends purpose to actions whose nihilism would other…