Quote of the Day (Mary McCarthy, on a Man With a ‘Gift for Being His Own Sympathizer’)

“Hen has a remarkable gift, a gift for being his own sympathizer. It’s a rare asset; it could be useful to him in politics or religion….He's capable of commanding great loyalty, because he's unswervingly loyal to himself. I'm not being sarcastic. Very few of us have that. It’s a species of self-alienation. He’s loyal to himself, objectively, as if he were another person, with that feeling of sacrifice and blind obedience that we give to a leader or a cause.” —American novelist, critic, and political activist Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), The Groves of Academe (1952)