Another Strange Notion Pervading Whole Peoples Is

I Have Often Wondered Why The Sounds Of The Beating Drums Do Not Make The Marching Soldiers Shoot Their Officers And Go Home.

Man Tends Always To Satisfy His Needs And Desires With The Least Possible Exertion.

By Consequence I Hold That No One Ever Did, Or Can Do, Anything For "society."... Comte Invented The Term Altruism As An Antonym For Egoism, And It Found Its Way At Once Into Everyone's Mouth, Although It Is Utterly Devoid Of Meaning, Since It Points To Nothing That Ever Existed In Mankind; This Hybrid Or Rather This Degenerate Form Of Hedonism Served Powerfully To Invest Collectivism's Principles With A Specious Moral Sanction, And Collectivists Naturally Made The Most Of It.

Like All Predatory Or Parasitic Institutions, Its First Instinct Is That Of Self-preservation. All Its Enterprises Are Directed First Towards Preserving Its Own Life, And, Second, Towards Increasing Its Own Power And Enlarging The Scope Of Its Own Activity. For The Sake Of This It Will, And Regularly Does, Commit Any Crime Which Circumstances Make Expedient.

Instead Of Recognizing The State As ‘the Common Enemy Of All Well-disposed, Industrious And Decent Men,’ The Run Of Mankind, With Rare Exceptions, Regards It Not Only As A Final And Indispensable Entity, But Also As, In The Main, Beneficent. The Mass-man, Ignorant Of Its History, Regards Its Character And Intentions As Social Rather Than Anti-social; And In That Faith He Is Willing To Put At Its Disposal An Indefinite Credit Of Knavery, Mendacity And Chicane, Upon Which Its Administrators May Draw At Will.