The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I’d make one that I can’t get yelled at for.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

We live in ugly times.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

Music is something no one can control.

We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

Mission presidents hold keys of responsibility for the welfare, safety, and success of their missionaries.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’m concerned about the recklessness of public policy that endangers people’s lives, especially in minority communities, where crime often is such a scourge.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘