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In my position I simply can’t afford pangs of conscience. Fortunately, they fade the more power one acquires. It’s an entirely natural process.

Any group which makes a claim to infallibility must be very careful not to make any mistakes, and the mistakes that will inevitably occur must be kept secret or explained away—by lies, subterfuges and distortions. And that will eventually cause the collapse of the entire edifice.

One of the troubles with the world is that so few laymen take an interest in science.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous. (Chapter XX)

Master Sean O’Lochlainn had always been partial to mules. “The mule,” he was fond of saying, “is as much smarter than a horse as a raven is smarter than a falcon. Neither a raven nor a mule will go charging into combat just because some human tells him to.”

Known to God only is the amount of human agony and suffering which sends its cry from the slave markets and Negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man up to his ear; mothers weeping for their children, breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts. (Chapter V)

I have always contended that the true connoisseur is to be pitied, for he has trained his taste to such perfection that he enjoys almost nothing.

I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe.

The plans of men do not necessarily coincide with those of the Universe.

In general he doesn’t know any more about magic than an ostrich knows about icebergs.

It had been one of those warm late spring days when no air moves and nothing else wants to. Not oppressively hot—just warm enough to enervate and to cause attacks of acute vernal inertia.

All that was necessary was to use one’s imagination to see how it might have happened, and then check the evidence to see if it did happen that way. The final step is to check the evidence to make sure it could not have happened any other way.