Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Words are loaded pistols.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

Society is at odds with itself.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Swimming has its educational value – mental, moral, and physical – in giving you a sense of mastery over an element, and of power of saving life, and in the development of wind and limb.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

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.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

The devil ain’t got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil’s a good friend, too… because when you don’t know him, that’s the time he can mosh you down.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

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

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

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.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

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.

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

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

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

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

A friend in power is a friend lost.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.