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

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

I’ve written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

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

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

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

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

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

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

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.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

By reading, you learn through others‘ experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, ‚The Martian Chronicles.‘

I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.

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.

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

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

My aim is to create a happy society with genuine friendship. Friendship between Tibetan and Chinese peoples is very essential.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

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

I don’t read books much.

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.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.