The House at the End of the World

by Dean Koontz

This is an age when freedoms are fragile. Those in power speak loudly, ceaselessly about compassion but rarely exhibit any.

Of the hard lessons that humanity learns, how many are retained? How very few? The passion of angry ideologues, the ignorance of the arrogant, the ferocity of utopians—how can such people lead the world to anything but its end?”

Like a muscle, courage requires constant testing to ensure it will be strong when terror weighs heavily on it.

When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity.

Those for whom self-love is the only love are very skilled at creating fantasies in which they live contentedly until reality threatens to pop their bubble, whereupon they can be capable of any atrocity in defense of their delusions.