Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

I think America has always been polarized.

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.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

We live in ugly times.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

It’s no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

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

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot… they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

Babylon is everywhere. You have wrong and you have right. Wrong is what we call Babylon, wrong things. That is what Babylon is to me. I could have born in England, I could have born in America, it make no difference where me born, because there is Babylon everywhere.

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.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

The Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

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.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid.

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

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

I don’t have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.

It isn’t generally the case that liberals dominate entire hierarchies. That isn’t generally how it works, because the hierarchies are usually set up so that conservatives fill up the hierarchies; it’s in the nature of hierarchy.

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

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

I’m not ashamed to say I fear something.

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

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.