Quotes about politics
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“I want to make films that are about visual pleasure for women. Not worry about whether they are in fashion, whether they are politically correct.”

Anna Biller (1965) film director

Under the Influence: Anna Biller on DONKEY SKIN - 14 Feb 2017, at 4 Min 02 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD9MrwcE7o8
From interview with The Criterion Collection

Robert B. Reich photo
Jacinda Ardern photo

“[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Shaw’s Lecture to the London’s Eugenics Education Society, The Daily Express, (March 4, 1910), quoted in Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency: Ideology and Fiction, Evelyn Cobley, University of Toronto Press (2009) p. 159
1910s

Tony Abbott photo

“In politics, what's not reported might as well not have happened.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Source: Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013), p.13

Tony Abbott photo

“Even the toughest politicians sometimes wonder whether political life is worth the personal cost.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Source: Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013), p. 4.

Noam Chomsky photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Karl Kautsky photo

“The choice of methods and weapons to be used by the champions of democracy will not depend upon our wishes but will be determined by political and social conditions. and especially by the methods and weapons of the enemy.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Karl Kautsky photo
Paul Manafort photo
Immanuel Kant photo
Ralph Nader photo

“America's Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that never once uses the words "corporation," "company," or "political parties."”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Their use of language reflected their antipathy toward the domineering influence of empire and big business... If "We the People" are the sole subjects of the Constitution, why is it that we are ruled by large corporations and their largely indentured servants—the Republican and Democratic Parties... "We the People" have allowed these plutocratic forces to slowly siphon away our power.
Breaking Through Power (2016)

Shaun Chamberlin photo
William Cobbett photo

“It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. ... What are these principles?—That governments were made for the people, and not the people for governments.—That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice.—That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth.--That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law.—That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative.—That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand.—That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.—That the press ought to be free. ... Ten thousand times as much has been written on the subject in England as in all the rest of the world put together. Our books are full of these principles. ... There is not a single political principle which you denominate French, which has not been sanctioned by the struggles of ten generations of Englishmen, the names of many of whom you repeat with veneration, because, apparently, you forget the grounds of their fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, and a whole host of patriots of England, Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or banished, during the administration of Pitt, you can give the name of Jacobins, and accuse them of French principles. Yet, not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘To the Merchants of England’, Political Register (29 April 1815), pp. 518–19
1810s

Arun Shourie photo
H. H. Asquith photo

“The severance of Ulster from the rest of Ireland is a geographical, and, therefore, a political impossibility. ... The Union is safe so long as Ulster is loyal.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

‘The invasion of Ulster’, The Spectator (29 September 1883), p. 6

“We need only look at the much lower level of anti-Americanism in Vietnam to realize that suffering incurred in wars does not necessarily dictate decades of animosity and fear between peoples. It’s what propaganda does with history — for contemporary political ends — that counts.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

"On the Recent Spate of 'Why North Korea Hates America' Articles" http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2017/05/27/1419/ (27 May 2017), Sthele Press
2010s

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Dan Abnett photo
Waleed Al-Husseini photo

“The veil is nothing but a sign of political Islam, as the armbands were for the Nazis!”

Waleed Al-Husseini (1989) Palestinian essayist and writer

The Islamic veil

Waleed Al-Husseini photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Wendell Berry photo

“By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

Marianne Williamson photo

“A politics of conscience is still yet possible. And yes….love will prevail.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (10 Jan 20)
Williamson's quotes in social media

Marianne Williamson photo
Glenn Greenwald photo

“News outlets correct lies. Slimy political operations deliberately use lies to advance their agenda and smear their adversaries. MSNBC has proven over and over again that they are decisively in the latter category. This is just the latest but by no means the only or even worst example.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"MSNBC Yet Again Broadcasts Blatant Lies, This Time About Bernie Sanders’s Opening Speech, and Refuses to Correct Them" (3 March 2019)

Glenn Greenwald photo
Benjamin Creme photo

“I don't like playing politics, I don't like having bosses and being told what to do, I don't like competition, I have no desire to manage other people, so I've instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a8wjKNSGCPSzdWMMa/how-to-escape-from-immoral-mazes#tggw3zpPyuGgrAttt on LessWrong, January 2020

Lai Pin-yu photo

“Politics need to bring people hope. We need more dreams and more stories that touch people.”

Lai Pin-yu (1992) Taiwanese social activist

Lai Pin-yu (2020) cited in " 'We need more dreams': Taiwan's 'Squad' rallies youth ahead of election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/10/taiwan-election-squad-youth-china-tsai-ing-wen" on The Guardian, 10 January 2020.

Lai Pin-yu photo

“For those of us that are newcomers to politics, there aren't any real scandal that our opponents can use to attack us. This is why my opponent is just attacking (me) at random.”

Lai Pin-yu (1992) Taiwanese social activist

Lai Pin-yu (2020) cited in " DPP: Lai Pin-yu, From Sunflower Activist to Legislative Candidate https://international.thenewslens.com/feature/taiwan-women-politics-2020/129610" on The News Lens, 3 January 2020.

Edward Carson, Baron Carson photo

“What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/dec/14/address-in-reply-to-his-majestys-most#column_44 in the House of Lords (14 December 1921)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“People of all political parties who were anti-Modi and anti-BJP were taking advantage of his inexperience.”

Kanwar Pal Singh Gill (1934–2017) Indian police officer

quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.

“Between friends and enemies, there is no question of freedom, only violence and subjugation. This is the reality of politics, a reality that liberals often do not dare to face.”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

《乌克兰宪政危机与政治决断》 ["Ukraine's constitutional crisis and political decisions"] (2004), translated by David Ownby in Rethinking China's Rise, p. 27

“The crucial questions in politics are not questions of right and wrong, but of obedience and disobedience. If you do not submit to political authority, then "If I say you're wrong, you're wrong, even if you're right."”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

《乌克兰转型中的宪政权威》 ["The authority of the constitution in a Ukraine in transition"] (2004), translated by David Ownby in Rethinking China's Rise https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=761eDwAAQBAJ, p. 27

“The political principles and the political will of the State are above all else.”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

法制与治理:国家转型中的法律 [Legal System and Governance: Law in a Transforming State] (2003), translated by Samuel Seppänen in Ideological Conflict and the Rule of Law in Contemporary China https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=soyJDAAAQBAJ, p. 162

“It's nonsense to talk about the war on Islamic terrorism as a clash of civilisations. The distinction is between civilisation and chaos. Whatever people may claim - and the desire to cut through the political processes can be very powerful - there is never any justification for violence.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

As quoted in “Michael Burleigh: The reluctant guru,” John Crace, The Guardian, March 10, 2008 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/mar/11/academicexperts.highereducationprofile

Geoffrey Hinton photo

“I think political systems will use it [artifical intelligence] to terrorize people.”

Geoffrey Hinton (1947) computer scientist and psychologist

about artificial intelligence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom
Quote

Tavleen Singh photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

Benjamin Creme photo
Sheldon Pollock photo

“Moving beyond orientalism finally presupposes moving beyond the culture of domination and the politics of coercion that have nurtured orientalism in all its varieties, and been nurtured by it in turn.”

Sheldon Pollock (1948) American linguist

(Pollock 1993:117), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

Jacques Delors photo

“We must define the political Europe that we want. We must plead for the federal approach.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech in Lorient (29 August 1993), quoted in The Times (30 August 1993), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Jacques Delors photo

“If we are really on the way towards a political entity with a common foreign policy on basic issues, then I consider that France's nuclear force should be available to serve that policy.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

On French television (5 January 1992), quoted in The Times (6 January 1992), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Jacques Delors photo

“If we do not succeed with political union...then the historic decline of Europe which began with the First World War will resume.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Interview with Der Spiegel, quoted in The Times (14 October 1991), p. 1
President of the European Commission

Jacques Delors photo

“Europe is a commercial giant and an economic power of the first rank, but it is a political dwarf. Political cooperation in the Community will grow. The question is whether the supply services will follow.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to the press (3 December 1980), quoted in The Times (4 December 1980), p. 5
Member of the European Parliament

Benjamin Creme photo
China Miéville photo

“This was not the time for rage but for politics and strategy.”

The Tain (p. 252)
Short Fiction, Looking for Jake (2005)

Paul J. McAuley photo

“I didn’t know that you were into politics.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

“Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”

Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 223)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Paavo Väyrynen photo

“Three reasons why young people don't have to worry about their future: education, politics and me.”

Paavo Väyrynen (1946) Finnish politician

Source: Presidential Election Campaign 2012

Warren Leopold photo

“Man is endowed with choice, but the world as he has made it is a perfect example of what not to do. Man's basic needs are food, shelter, clothing, and procreation. The stock market, cosmetics, religious games, war games, the myth of teaching, and political games are the lack of these.”

Warren Leopold (1920–1998)

[Westlund, Darren, Cambria Treasures, Warren Leopold, Cambira, CA, Small Town Surrealist Productions, 1990, 39, ASIN: B000E263NM, 2019-03-17, https://www.amazon.com/Cambria-Treasures-Interviews-Noteworthy-Cambrians/dp/B000E263NM]

Ron Paul photo

“Philosophy is much more important than politics, but we have to deal with politics because politics is the measuring rod of the philosophy... It's important that we... try to get the truth out...”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Reflecting On The Past & Anticipating The Future, Ron Paul Liberty Report], YouTube (31 December 2019)
2019

Lorna Dee Cervantes photo

“When I first went to Mexico in 1974 and was involved in Chicano teatro—Mexican American guerilla theater—I realized that my politics and my poetry could merge; suddenly it wasn’t just for me. Before then, I didn’t share this poetry; I kept it in notebooks…”

Lorna Dee Cervantes (1954) American writer

On how her politics and poetry merged in “A Conversation with Lorna Dee Cervantes” https://www.academia.edu/4464223/A_Conversation_with_Lorna_Dee_Cervantes in World Literature Today (2010)

“…there are individual ways that we work our way through all of these systems that are corrosive and inescapable. But if there is a solution to the system itself, it’s at a collective level. It’s the level of policy and politics, it’s not at the level of individual choice.”

Jia Tolentino (1988) American writer and editor

On why her book Trick Mirror offers no solutions in “Jia Tolentino: What It’s Like Being the Most Talked About Millennial Writer” https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/11896/jia-tolentino-trick-mirror-book-interview-new-yorker-staff-writer-2019 in AnOther (2019 Sep 15)

Buckminster Fuller photo

“Up to now, the world of politics doesn’t know that. That’s why all nations are dependent on armaments, why we have the arms race.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Julia Gillard photo
David Frawley photo
Yasha Levine photo
Walter Reuther photo

“You cannot save democracy in a vacuum of idealism. You have got to be motivated by idealism, but you have got to also be fighting the hard problem of practical politics.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Statement to the Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, Washington, D.C., October 9, 1956, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 170
1950s, Statement to the Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections (1956)

Francis Bacon photo

“Dissimulations is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart, to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics, that are the great dissemblers.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Simulation And Dissimulation

Anatoly Antonov photo
Kamila Shamsie photo

“…I am absolutely not someone who thinks that politics is separate from the most intimate details of people’s lives…”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: On how politics still seeps into peoples’ personal lives in “INTERVIEWS: Kamila Shamsie” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21570-kamila-shamsie-fiction#.Xc2ItmNKjcs in BookPage (2017 Aug 1)

Kamila Shamsie photo

“I tend to be an optimist about human nature but a political pessimist…I think we’re living in very, very scary times and we have to find ways of looking squarely at it and finding reasons for optimism.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: On balancing pessimism and optimism in “Kamila Shamsie: 'We have to find reasons for optimism’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/08/kamila-shamsie-we-have-to-find-reasons-for-optimism-home-fire in The Guardian (2018 Jun 8)

Maximilien Robespierre photo
Jack Kirby photo
Ibn Hazm photo
Milton Friedman photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“[I]f it is the moral right we are to look at, I say, that on every principle of moral obligation, I hold that the Jew has a right to political power.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1830) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1830/apr/05/the-jews#column_1313 in favour of Robert Grant's Jewish Disabilities Bill
1830s

Lou Dobbs photo
James K. Morrow photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Rina Mor photo
George Packer photo
Martin Van Buren photo
Edmund Burke photo
Edmund Burke photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“To be a liberal means to believe in human freedom. It means to believe in human beings. It means to champion that form of social and political order which releases the greatest amount of human energy; permits greatest liberty for individuals and groups, in planning and living their lives; cherishes freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of action, limited by only one thing: the protection of the freedom of others.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 64

Enoch Powell photo

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...</p><p>In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.</p><p>We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.</p><p>Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.</p><p>Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.</p>
Source: The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 36-37

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“I am convinced that upon every religious, as well as upon every political ground, the true and the wise course is not to deal out religious liberty by halves, by quarters, and by fractions; but to deal it out entire, and to leave no distinction between man and man on the ground of religious differences from one end of the land to the other.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Source: Except from a speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1883/apr/26/second-reading-adjourned-debate-second in the House of Commons (26 April 1883) in support of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh being permitted to take his seat in Parliament.

Johnny Chiang photo

“Kuomintang is an inclusive political party, and different opinions can be discussed.”

Johnny Chiang (1972) Taiwanese politician

Source: Johnny Chiang (2020) cited in " KMT warns Tsai, weighs more anti-US pork protest https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/11/30/2003747835" on Taipei Times, 30 November 2020.

Aldous Huxley photo

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Benjamin Disraeli photo