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

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

I think the Iranians are clearly determined to have a nuclear program. And we have to assume that with a nuclear program they have the capability and the will to create a nuclear weapon.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

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.

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

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

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

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.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

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

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

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.

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

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

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

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.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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 first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

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

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

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

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.

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

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

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

Everybody is entertained to death.

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.

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

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

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

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.‘

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

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

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.