Social Critic Quotes

“Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

“Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.”

“To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.”

“He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.”

“My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.”

“News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.”

“You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity.”

“Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist? O'Brien: Of course he exists. Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me? O'Brien: You do not exist.”

“The Party is not interested in the overt act. The thought is all we care about.”

“What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.”

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”

“The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there are a handful insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers.. but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!”

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.”

“When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?”

“I've set my own rules to live by. The first one is: 'Never believe ANYthing the government says.'”

“I loved the angiogram. They stick a thing in your thigh and it goes all the way up to your heart. Isn't that a thrill? Well, at least the nurse scored thigh.”

“We [americans] are not a freedom-loving people in the beautiful, spiritual sense. We have an inspiring Constitution, but we're a hardhearted people.”

“If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know? If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words? Why is 'phonics' not spelled the way it sounds? How come abbreviated is such a long word?”

“Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.”

“hard work is a misleading term. physical effort & long hours do not constitute hard work. hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing...you're doing hard work.”

“I'm never critical or judgmental about whether or not a movie is any good. The way I look at it, if several hundred people got together every day for a year or so - a number of then willing to put on heavy makeup, wear clothes that weren't their own and pretend to be people other than themselves - and their whole purpose for doing all this was to entertain me, then I'm not gonna start worrying about whether or not they did a good job. The effort alone was enough to make me happy.”

“When you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the Freak Show. And when you're born in America, you're given a front row seat. And some of us get to sit there with notebooks.”

“The best thing about living at the water's edge: You only have assholes on three sides of you, and if they come this way you can hear them splash.”

“Why do 'slow down' and 'slow up' mean the same thing? Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?”

“They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this f**kin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.”