If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.

When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.

I think it's funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns - just somebody naming the exact nature of what you're doing?

It's not a question of who will allow me to do it, it's a question of who will stop me.

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.

The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.