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

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‚If only Islam would have a Reformation‘ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

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

The secret to humor is surprise.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

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

Politics have no relation to morals.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

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.

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

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.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

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.

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.

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.‘

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

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

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.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

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

Society is at odds with itself.

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.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

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.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

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.

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

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?

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

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.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

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.

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.

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.

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

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

The Occupy movement is – it was a big surprise.