Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself.

The perfection preached in the Gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning.

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.

You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.

The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.