Quotes from Arthur Herman

Being "civilized" had originally meant living under Roman, or "civil," law; but at the dawn of the Renaissance it had come to denote a way of life and law distinct from that of barbarism. It included prohibitions against murder, incest, and cannibalism; belief in a transcendant creative divinity; respect for property and legal contracts; and essential social institutions such as marriage, friendship, and the family.

For Lenin, "self-determination" was a clarion call not for democracy and freedom but for revolt and bloodshed that would rock the capitalist imperialist order down to its foundations.

Even after the president's testimony that the telegram was genuine, newspaper editors and some senators simply refused to believe it.

Wilson's ringing words on receiving the news—"a little band of wilful men representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible"—

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves.

Democracy makes a stable civic life impossible. As Nietzsche's Zarathustra says, "I turned my back on those who rule when I saw what they call ruling: higgling and haggling for power with the rabble.