All Talk Of Winning The People By

In Human History A Moral Victory Is Always A Disaster, For It Debauches And Degrades Both The Victor And The Vanquished.

The Old Testament, As Everyone Who Has Looked Into It Is Aware, Drips With Blood; There Is, Indeed, No More Bloody Chronicle In All The Literature Of The World.

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies. When They Fail To Come Off Its Clergy Simply Say That They Will Be Realized Later On. Thus, If We Have Another Boom, They Will Argue That The Collapse Of Capitalism Is Only Postponed. The Fact That The Greatest Booms Ever Heard Of Followed Marx's Formal Prophecy Of The Downfall Of Capitalism Is Already Forgotten, Just As Millions Have Long Since Forgotten The Early Christian Prophecy That The End Of The World Was At Hand. The First Christians Accepted Postponements As Docilely As The Communists Of Today.

The State Is Not Force Alone. It Depends Upon The Credulity Of Man Quite As Much As Upon His Docility. Its Aim Is Not Merely To Make Him Obey, But Also To Make Him Want To Obey.

The Whole Drift Of Our Law Is Toward The Absolute Prohibition Of All Ideas That Diverge In The Slightest Form From The Accepted Platitudes, And Behind That Drift Of Law There Is A Far More Potent Force Of Growing Custom, And Under That Custom There Is A Natural Philosophy Which Erects Conformity Into The Noblest Of Virtues And The Free Functioning Of Personality Into A Capital Crime Against Society.