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.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

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

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

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

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Part of the problem is there are people in Washington, D.C. in positions of power to whom the border is just a nuisance, and I think some of them believe that illegal immigration is a moral good. It is not. It undermines legal immigration.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

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.

I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right?

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

I am such a political person.

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

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

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

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.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Things do not change; we change.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

There are some loony people in this world!

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

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.

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.

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 world has entered an era of the most profound and challenging change in human history.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

Change in all things is sweet.