Real Psychological Wisdom

My favorite single line of dialogue from any motion picture, a line I repeat often to myself as a sort of consolation, comes from Tom Alfredson’s 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and it is, “The fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.”

While the line is original, I was reading the proverbs of William Hazlitt this morning (who is English, like John le Carré) and I came across, “Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.”