I’m afraid I was always constitutionally incapable of bringing myself to the required pitch of enthusiasm

'Were you ever a communist, Bernhard?' I asked. 

At once — I saw it in his face — he was on the defensive. After a moment, he said slowly: 

'No, Christopher. I’m afraid I was always constitutionally incapable of bringing myself to the required pitch of enthusiasm.' 

I felt suddenly impatient with him; angry, even: 'ever to believe in anything?'

Bernhard smiled faintly at my violence. It may have amused him to have roused me like this.

'Perhaps. . .' Then he added, as if to himself: 'No that is not quite true. . . '

'What do you believe in, then?' I challenged. 

Bernhard was silent for some moments, considering this — his beaky delicate profile impassive, his eyes half -closed. At last he said: 'Possibly I believe in discipline.' 

'In discipline?'

'You don't understand that, Christopher? Let me try to explain ... I believe in discipline for myself, not necessarily for others. For others, I cannot judge. I know only that I myself must have certain standards which I obey and without which I am quite lost. . . . Does that sound very dreadful?'

C. Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), 198-9