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

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

If workers are more insecure, that’s very ‚healthy‘ for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations‘ economic health.

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.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

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.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

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

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

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.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

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

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

The Internet is just another experiment showing us more sides of us.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

I hold the door for the ladies – I’m a gent.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

The American people have not become heartless.

People like to talk about war.

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

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

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

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

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

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

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

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

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

I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.