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.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

Children are all foreigners.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

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

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

The middle class is so funny, it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

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

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

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.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

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

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

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

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

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

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

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

Everybody is entertained to death.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

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

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

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

We believe that according the name ‚investors‘ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‚romantic.‘

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

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

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

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

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.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

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

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

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

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

We live in a bewildering world.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

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

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

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.

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.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

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

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.