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

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

America is just downright mean.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.

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

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

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

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

I never talk about my next project.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

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.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I’ve managed to gracefully avoid that. It’s hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing.

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

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 think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

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.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

People do not make wars; governments do.

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

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

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.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

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

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.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

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?

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

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

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

In a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

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

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

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

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

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.

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

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.