A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

How should a man be capable of grooming his own horse, or of furbishing his own spear and helmet, if he allows himself to become unaccustomed to tending even his own person, which is his most treasured belonging?

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

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

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

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

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.

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

Sure it’s a big job; but I don’t know anyone who can do it better than I can.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

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

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.

America is just downright mean.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

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.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

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.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

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

Children are all foreigners.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations… They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.

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

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

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

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.

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.

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

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

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

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

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

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.