“One is almost driven to the cynical conclusion that men are only decent when they are powerless.”

“Yes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman.

-Jillian's mother”

“Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea, they become powerless when they oppose it.”

“Your universities teach you to be eternal cynics, a cynicism that can be only drowned in alcohol and diet pills and psychoanalysts and golf. Forget your cynicism. There is not one who has more respect for life than a revolutionist.”

“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”

“One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed.”

“The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.”

“Men will not change as long as women ‘marry up.’ Men won't change until we have a perspective on how powerless power makes us. A woman cannot help a man change until she has a perspective on how powerless power makes men.”

“I confess that when I am sought to be driven to a conclusion which appears to me unreasonable and unjust, I at once suspect the validity of the premises, even if I can detect no flaw in the reasoning from them.”

“America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”