People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

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.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?

Why should human females become sterile in their forties, while female crocodiles continue to lay eggs into their third century?