The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

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

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

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

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

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

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

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.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

I live in a crazy time.

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.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

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

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

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

To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn’t do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

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

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

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

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

A jug fills drop by drop.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

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!

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

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

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.