"If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don’t have to say anything. Be friendly and then go doyour best. That will make you special, too!"

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."

"A commune of library employees in Moscow created an 'extreme' commune in which all clothing - including undergarments - was collectivized. According to Mehnert, if a communard preferred to wear his or her own underclothes 'it would be characterized as a backslide into darkest capitalism; as prejudice originating in a petit-bourgeois ideology'."

"500. There are paradoxes. If there were no night, we would be deprived of themagnificent image of a starry sky. Thus light deprives us of 'vision,' anddarkness helps us 'see."

"But these are sad times, the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can giveimpudence to his betters!"

"Kindness in looks and words and ways is true politeness, and any one can have it if they only try to treat other people as they like to be treated themselves."