The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive.
Section 90
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
“The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.”
Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 6 (p. 48)
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Aldous Huxley 290
English writer 1894–1963Related quotes
Fourth State of the Union Address http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/76.html (December 6, 1864)
1860s
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Derivation of the Nature of Living Beings, pp. 176–177
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)