This whole fuss did not only damage Fischer's image, but that of the USA as well. The way the Americans treated one of their most popular citizens did not make a positive impression worldwide.
“Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.”
“To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.”