I have a theory of statistics: if you can double them or halve them and they still work, they are really good statistics.

Wordsmiths who serve established power...castrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim.

The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.

As an inclusive quality, imagination is thus our primary force for progress, whatever progress is.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

Governments produced by the most banal of electoral victories, like those produced by the crudest of coups d'état, will always feel obliged to dress themselves up linguistically in some way.

In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.