"Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings."

Chapter 1, page 3

"The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion."

Chapter 1, page 3

"Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent though, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They could only live on condition of being machines."

Chapter 1, page 4

"They lived like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in...