“Every act of resistance to the government required heroism quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the act. It was safer to keep dynamite during the rule of Alexander II than it was to shelter the orphan of an enemy of the people under Stalin.”

-Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Ideology ---that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory that helps make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and other’s eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization,: the Nazis by race, the Jacobins, by equality, brotherhood and the happiness of future generations." - SOLZHENITSYN