The media system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to the right of deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Calling Jeremy Corbyn the ‘British Bernie Sanders’ would be very reductive, very simplistic and probably the best way to explain him to Americans, while being wildly inaccurate. As for Corbyn and Sanders, I think we’ll have to wait and see whether being principled actually gets you anywhere. I don’t think you can doubt the tenacity of their beliefs. But can you translate that into power?

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

We explain when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you do not stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, you go high.

Life has two rules: 1. Never quite 2. Always remember 1.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

If someone out there doesn’t agree with me, then somewhere a village is missing their idiot.

It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.

I think we have to push robustly for the limitation of arms supplies … Israel is after all facing an investigation … for war crimes, [at the International Criminal Court] as indeed are the Hamas forces on a much different or lesser scale.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

The blues tells a story in itself. It can make you happy or give you a feeling to swing.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

The greatest cause of a poor image is the absence of unconditional love.

Be so good they can’t ignore you.