July 31st, 2007

"Only a few of them became full-fledged ideologies, that is, systems based upon a single opinion that proved strong enough to attract and persuade a majority of people and broad enough to lead them through the various experiences and situations of an average modern life. For an ideology differs from a single opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the "riddles in the universe", or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man."
- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (p 211)