Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

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

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

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

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

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

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

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

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

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

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

America is just downright mean.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

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

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

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

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

We live in ugly times.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

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 smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

Children are all foreigners.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

We moralize among ruins.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

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

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

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.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

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

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.