The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

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

America is just downright mean.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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.

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.

Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

We are going to transform Britain’s rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you’ve lived a good life.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa’s major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.

There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

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.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

Politics have no relation to morals.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

I have now exactly the same weight I had when I was 18, 20.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

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.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

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

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done. Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

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

If that’s there, I believe that technology will probably step up to their part of it.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

The American people have not become heartless.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

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

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

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

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

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.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

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.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.