"The Czech's 'propensity to bend' before a superior force was not necessarily a weakness. Rather, their superior metaphysical view of life encouraged them to look at acts of force as ephemera." p. 14

"...In his view, the true heroes of this impossible situation were the people who wouldn't raise a murmur against the Party or State - yet who seemed to carry the sum of Western Civilization in their heads. 'With their silence...they inflict a final insult on the State, by pretending it does not exist."' p. 15

"He finished by observing that Marx's vision of an age of infinite leisure had, in one sense, come true. The State, in its efforts to wipe out 'traces of individualism,' offered limitless time for the intelligent individual to dream his private and heretical thoughts." p. 15

"An object in a museum case...must suffer the de-natured existence of an animal...