“Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom.”

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.

He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is – just be a little kinder.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win.

The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.

Hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.

A sadder but wiser man is a thousand times more agreeable to meet than the feller that never makes a mistake.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason.

You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal.