[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent? To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.

I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt, and I claim that right.

What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.

You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

In one way, traveling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.