“What matters in Politics is what men actually do – sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.”

To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.

BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.

Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.

Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.

Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.

Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.

Free men stick their necks out.

Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.

If, of course, one builds into the concept of an ‘individual’ all that Professor Hayek does in his Road To Serfdom.

The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.

One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the ‘inner contradictions’ of such a system.

The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.

Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.

Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.

I like acting because I get to find different parts of myself, or at least create different parts that don’t already exist, and see the world through someone else’s eyes.

And Shanghai is amazing. I’m a fan of science fiction so when you’re there in the night with all the lights and all this modernity, it’s like a set in a movie.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

They were all wonderful [on Andy Griffith Show], but I enjoyed Andy and Don and Ron the most. Ron played little Opie so well. He really took acting seriously and worked hard to deliver his lines well.

I’m just looking for things to steal [on working with great actors]. It’s like going back to acting school. When you’re around people that do it well and you get your head out of your ass, you can really learn something.

Acting’s always felt like a kind of creature that lays dormant and collects observations when I’m not working. And then when I’m actually doing it, it just rises up. But everything I do is more about curiosity and investigation than it is about performance.

The difference between the extras here and in France is the French extras read books. Actually, they hide the book and pretend that they’re acting. Here (in Hollywood), you can see everybody wants his break.