“Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.”

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.

In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.

Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.

The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.

Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.

The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven’t done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself.

It is only to stress the fact that the difference between a clandestine literature and no literature equals the difference between one and zero.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

We cannot start over, but we can begin now, and make a new beginning.

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Peace begins with a smile.