"What causes the greatest crimes in history? The greatest bloodshed? The most murders? I would say two things: sincere love and a sincere devotion to liberty . . . If you kill out of love for a perfect utopia, you never stop killing because human nature is always imperfect. Robespierre, rightly called 'the incorruptible,' was more sincere than Danton and always found somebody deviating just a little bit from true liberty.""I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away."
- quotes by Peter Viereck. The historian Joseph Ellis, commenting on Viereck and other contrarians in The New Yorker, said "they are uncomfortable with democracy, if democracy means majority rule. They think majorities are mostly wrong. They're happiest when they are being denounced. They know they must be right then."
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