Social Critic Quotes

“A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt”

“The future will soon be a thing of the past.”

“As much as I love my family, I enjoy it when the house is empty, because then I know I'm truly alone, as we all are on the planet, after all. Every atom in us is originally from a star. And during my moments of aloneness, I'm most mindful of that; that I'm just another group of matter randomly but wonderfully arranged. That's when I feel my immortality.”

“Looking back, I realize that my life has been a series of incidents where one person has said to another, "Get this asshole outta here!"”

“A good motto to live by: "Always try not to get killed.”

“Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one's chest, to sing one's song. So that element is present in all art. It is the key to even standing up and saying, "Hey, listen to me." Self-expression can be based on looking at the world and making observations about it.”

“I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.”

“Rhetoric paints with a broad brush.”

“Because we were a poor area, the school had a small budget and was unable to teach the second half of the alphabet.”

“Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers.”

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.”

“An art thief is a man who takes pictures.”

“You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your f**kin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.”

“I was looking in the mirror the other day and I realized I haven't changed much since I was in my twenties. The only difference is I look a whole lot older now.”

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“Let me get a sip of water here... you figure this stuff is safe to drink? Actually, I don't care, I drink it anyway. You know why? Because I'm an American and I expect a little cancer in my food and water. I'm a loyal American and I'm not happy unless I let government and industry poison me a little bit every day.”

“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.”

“Do you remember writing in your diary," he said, "that it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at least a person who understood you and could be talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

“I have tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.”

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

“The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.”

“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

“Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past." "He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.”