It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we’ve forgotten there’s any other way.

I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners.

Regardless of what our national credit rating is, people will always want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, fuel for their cars, and clothes on their backs.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

I like sweaters. I have a sweater obsession, I guess.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets. I didn’t want anybody’s name on my backside. I personally don’t like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone’s likeness all over it.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.

Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don’t get it.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Fashion fades, only style remains the same.

I think a lot of people love to convolute what everyone else does in order to disempower women.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

God never meant that people were to wear clothes. He meant we were to be nude. But we were in a state of innocence. Then sin came into the human race and became a blood poisoning.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married – who divorce in three seconds – don’t want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

You entertain people who are satisfied. Hungry people can’t be entertained – or people who are afraid. You can’t entertain a man who has no food.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

My clothes are very popular in Japan.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

I always wear the kind of stuff that makes you overheat and die.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.