So I've always been interested in politics. And I thank my parents for that. As you can see, there's a strong element of moral indignation behind this interest, and indignation is well and good in doses, but I noticed fairly early in life that some people live to find stuff to be indignant about. And it's pretty unattractive. That's why I decided to become a wiseass.

L'homme, dans l'état actuel de la société, me paraît plus corrompu par sa raison que par ses passions. Ses passions (j'entendes ici celles qui appartiennent à l'homme primitif) ont conservé, dans l'ordre social, le peu de nature qu'on y retrouve encore.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his own holy cause.

The conservative has little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires.

And sometimes the difference between individual and organized indignation is the difference between criminal and political action.

man of sense will not take part in politics either∗; he knows the kinds of personal connections that politics involves. So what’s to keep us from living as if we were as unsocial as flies?

People who are more rational don't perceive emotion less, they just regulate it better.

The patriotic fervor of a population is not always in direct proportion to its well-being and the fair dealing of its government. Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect. Hence the paradox that when government policies or historical accidents make the attainment and maintenance of individual self-respect difficult, the nationalist spirit of the people becomes more ardent and extreme. The unattainability of individual self-respect is not the least factor behind the chauvinism of the populace in Fascist and Communist regimes.

but let me, as an old man, who ought by this time to have profited by experience, say that when I was younger, I found I often misinterpreted the intentions of people, and found they did not mean what at the time I supposed they meant; and, further, that as a general rule, it was better to be a little dull of apprehension, where phrases seemed to imply pique, and quick in perception, when on the contrary they seemed to imply kindly feeling. The real truth never fails ultimately to appear; and opposing parties if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly, than when overwhelmed. All I mean to say is, that it is better to be blind to the results of partisanship, and quick to see good will. One has more happiness in oneself, in endeavoring to follow the things that make for peace. You can hardly imagine how often I have been heated in private when opposed, as I have thought unjustly and superciliously, and yet I have striven, and succeeded I hope, in keeping down replies of the like kind. And I know I have never lost by it. I would not say all this to you did I not esteem, you as a true philosopher and friend.

Ask the average American what is the salient passion in his emotional armamentarium — what is the idea that lies at the bottom of all his other ideas — and it is very probable that, nine times out of ten, he will nominate his hot and unquenchable rage for liberty. He regards himself, indeed, as the chief exponent of liberty in the whole world, and all its other advocates as no more than his followers, half timorous and half envious. To question his ardour is to insult him as grievously as if one questioned the honour of the republic or the chastity of his wife. And yet it must be plain to any dispassionate observer that this ardour, in the course of a century and a half, has lost a large part of its old burning reality and descended to the estate of a mere phosphorescent superstition.

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country.

If a man works without any selfish motive in view, does he not gain anything? Yes, he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. In the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but in the heart of our hearts we know its value, and the good it brings. It is the greatest manifestation of power — this tremendous restraint; self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action.

I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.