“The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.”

The U.S. – the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that’s hardly even a joke.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way.

If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‘among the most unspeakable crimes in history.

That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.

So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

You have all grown up expecting things to go your way almost instantaneously.

We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,–just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all.

When the subconscious mind must chose between deeply rooted emotions and logic, emotions will almost always win.

We could almost say that being willing to be a fool is one of the first wisdoms. So acknowledging foolishness is always a very important and powerful experience. The phenomenal world can be perceived and seen properly if we see it from the perspective of being a fool.

Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man’s honesty thanthat?of knowing himselftobe quiteloved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.

It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.