Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

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

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

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

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people. He was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

There are some loony people in this world!

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

The middle class is so funny, it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

We live in an imperfect world, and imperfect people surround us every day.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I never eat salad. I make sure I don’t put a lot of junk into my system, but I hate vegetables!

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.