Thread by @pmarca

"The soul is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse--and his own mechanism will do your work for you."

"Want to know how it's done? There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way."

"Direct man toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Tell man that he must live for others, that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it or ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish?"

"Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as his noblest virtue--and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of personal value."

"Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up self-respect. You've got him. He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey--because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That's one way."

"Here's another way. Kill man's capacity to recognize greatness or achieve it. Great men can't be ruled. We don't want any great men. Don't deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within."

"The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the most inept--and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection..."

"Don't set out to raze all shrines--you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity--and the shrines are razed."

"Then there's another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at everything."

"Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul--and his soul won't be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man. One doesn't reverence with a giggle."

"Here's another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. So kill their joy in living."

"Unhappy men will come to you. They'll need you. They'll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man's soul--and the space is yours to fill."

"Of course, you must dress it up. Use big vague words. Universal Harmony - Eternal Spirit - Divine Purpose - Nirvana - Paradise - Racial Supremacy - The Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

-- A fictional character who could never exist in real life, I assume.