“Liberties are not given, they are taken.”

Man is hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgetry

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.

The greatest triumphs of propoganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.

It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it.

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity.

The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

Writers don’t need to be given formulas; they need to be shown possibilities.

If your government had given me a thousandth of the sum it spent to depose me, I could have won that war.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.