We don’t need to have the answers. We’ll never have them. They’ll come and go and change. And all we can do is figure out the best way to behave when life comes at us....

Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

Niemand ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als jene, die fälschlicherweise glauben, frei zu sein.

Be kind, for whenever kindness becomes part of something, it beautifies it. Whenever it is taken from something, it leaves it tarnished.

When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn’t write a novel,...

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

Dynasties rise and fall according to what the Chinese used to call ‘the mandate of heaven’, but life for the peasant changes little.

Participating in Society in not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it.

Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the...

A society without humour is like a tree without roots.

True freedom comes from being unknown.

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal...

That which is good for the society is not necessarily good for the individual. That which is good for the individual is good for the society.

It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make an arrest,...

Tolerance is the price we pay for living in a free, pluralistic society.

We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it...

Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Often we don’t notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.

Those who hold to the Christian faith see law as an ultimate order of the universe. It is the invariable factor in a variable world, the unchanging order in a changing universe. Law for the...

Or was he merely a mollycoddled favorite, enjoying capriciously prejudiced love? Schenback was inclined to believe the latter. Inborn in nearly every artist’s nature is a voluptuous, treacherous tendency to accept the injustice if it...

You’re loco, Carlos. Insane. Totally crazy… Most guys think they’re imperfect for still being virgins past the age of seventeen.

Being normal is the same as being unique, of course, if everybody would be themselves.

The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted -in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations,...

Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.

The Book revealed to Muhammad is one and unique of its kind. It has left indelible impression on the hearts of humanity. Nothing can overcome its majesty. The Quran has given new dimensions to human...

It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used...

As a society we’ve progressed to a point where it is unacceptable behavior to knock someone down who is acting a fool. I teach my children to use their words when faced with a conflict....

Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.

Humans have evolved levels of cooperation that are unprecedented among primate species. You can see it even in babies. Say you are playing with a baby and begin to put the toys in a box....

[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social...

Sadly but, perhaps, not altogether unexpectedly this society has had very limited success in achieving what is supposed to be the justification for its existence– the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest possible number...

To her amazement, she realized that the way of life of these people was nothing more than an indeterminate fiction, casually knotted together at particular points that were used again and again. With four or...

We tell our children they’re trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving...

Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below...

Good sex is the basis of any truly civilized society.

That’s the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores–when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our...

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance.

The law is so complex and voluminousthat no one, not even the most knowledgeable lawyer, can understand itall. Moreover, lawyers and legal scholars have not gone out of their wayto make the law accessible to...

Politicians are like warts on the body of society. And the only thing worse than warts are lawyers and lobbyists.

It is said that we do not make the guilty party suffer for the sake of suffering; it is nonetheless true that we find it right that he should suffer.

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years.

What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.

Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.

Most people are too silly to be truly interested in any thing. They herd together like cattle, and do not know what is good for them.

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

…there is nothing so dangerous in its consequences as injustice to individuals- whether it arise from prejudice of color or from any other source; that a wrong done to one man is a wrong to...

To hate someone just because he doesn’t presume like you is big blunder.

Raum ist der Ausdruck der Gesellschaft.