I. F. Stone Quotes

When you're young, you get blamed for crimes that you didn't commit. When you are old, you get credit for virtues that you never had. I guess it all evens out in the end.

Victor Serge died in exile and obscurity, apparently no more than a splinter of a splinter in the Marxist movement. But with the passage of the years, he looms up as one of the great moral figures of our time, an artist of such integrity and a revolutionary of such purity as to overshadow those who achieved fame and power. His failure was his success. I know of no participant in Russia's revolution and Spain's agonies who more deserves the attention of our concerned youth.

If you want to know about governments, all you need to know is two words: Governments lie.

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

The only thing God didn't do to Job was give him a computer.

When war comes, reason is regarded as treason.

If you live long enough, you get accused of things you never did and praised for virtues you never had.

Rich people march on Washington every day.

The arms race is based on an optimistic view of technology and a pessimistic view of man. It assumes there is no limit to the ingenuity of science and no limit to the deviltry of human beings.

All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.

Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.

History is a tragedy, not a morality tale.

Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.

Every man is his own Pygmalion, and spends his life fashioning himself. And in fashioning himself, for good or ill, he fashions the human race and its future.

The only social justice movements worth fighting for are the struggles for justice where you lose, you lose, you lose- until you win.

You have to take the long view. First, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, man has already progressed to the point where a commandment against cannibalism was no longer necessary. And, second, it's like pissing on a boulder. For the first few thousand years, you don't see any effect. But after that, you start to see a definite impact.