Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world.
We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American.
No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.
The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.
I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I see not beyond death. Let me live while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less than an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.
I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.
Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.