The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

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

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

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.

What’s fascinating is, people in Washington would rather spend time in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood would rather spend time in Washington.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

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

I think America has always been polarized.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

What is common sense isn’t common practice.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The American people have not become heartless.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.

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.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

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.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

The ‚public‘ scares me, but people I trust.

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

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

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.

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

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.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

I don’t have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

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.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I have visited Japan several times and have always been shown wonderful hospitality.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.