We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

The society in ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

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

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

We live in ugly times.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

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

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

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

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

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

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

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

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

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.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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

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