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

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

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

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

The society in ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

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

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

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

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

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

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.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

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.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

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

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.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

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

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

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

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

I’ve had just about everything punched. I’ve had things grabbed that just shouldn’t be grapped.

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

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

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

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Example is leadership.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

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.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

Let my enemies devour each other.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

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.

In the ’70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

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.

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.