The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

The war is waged against its own subjects and its object is not the victory...but to keep the very structure of society intact.

But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.