"How do things stand now with our politics? With our opinion, that is, on how the state should be organized? I say 'our' because in political matters it is of course presumptuous and wrong to speak in the first person singular. Here one never stands alone. There is no political originality. One takes sides, and one may only say, 'We believe,' or 'I, too, believe.' This stamps the political sphere, therefore, as inferior, because it is a nonpersonal sphere; in it opinions prevail, and opinions do not confer rank. Political opinions lie on the street: Pick one up and attach yourself to it, and to many, possibly to yourself, too, you will seem more respectable than before, but this is based on illusion." Thomas Mann