every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.

Thought ... is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under the conditions of political freedom. Unfortunately ... no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

where everybody is guilty, nobody is.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.