The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‚solution‘ to society’s ‚problems.‘

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.

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

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

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

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.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

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.

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.

America is just downright mean.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

We live in a bewildering world.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

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.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they’ve had forever. And they’ve been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

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

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

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

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.