every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.

Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not.

Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

No argument can persuade me to like oysters if I do not like them. In other words, the disturbing thing about matters of taste is that they are not communicable.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

These are the fifties, you know. The disgusting, posturing fifties.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.