The temptation before 1933 was to believe in Hitler as a savior, to believe in a national rebirth. The path to National Socialism led through a wasteland of personal fears, collective anxiety, and resentments. The temptation was to surrender oneself to a dictator, to believe in a miracle. Hitler evoked human will and divine providence. The religious-mystical element in National Socialism was uncannily appealing to unpolitical people, to unrealistic people at odds with their world and accustomed perhaps to the dream of heroic irrationalism. The temptation was to abandon oneself to national delirium- despite (or even because of) the threat of violence.

The violent have been victorious for most of history because they kindled the fear with which everyone is born.

Even Gandhi, with all his charisma, did not 'melt the hearts' of his oppressors, as he had hoped. After softening, hearts harden again. Asoka too was wrong to …

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.

Nothing irritates us [Fascists] so much as to be taken for pillars of order. Nothing so exasperates us as the people who come to us through fear of Communism. …

That worst evil of long dictatorships: the loss of all political experience.

The American people and, yes, all too many of their political leaders have been manipulated and controlled in recent years through the most shameless use of fe…