Ayn Rand. Atlas shrugged (№ 325437)

Tragic mockery, irony the history of mankind is that all people erect altars tormented people and animals deified. Humanity always worshiped, not human but animal, animal qualities - the idols of power and instinct, kings, and mystics who are looking exactly for the weak-willed, meek soul. To rule the world, mystics inspire people, that dark emotion above reason that knowledge comes blind, unmotivated jerks and he needs to follow the same blindly without putting his question. The kings ruled by fangs and claws, their method is to take away, their purpose - someone else, their strength relies solely on the baton and the gun.
The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they were immolated and the animal whom they enshrined. It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force-the mystics and the kings-the mystics,
who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-and the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power.