His parents called him Youngster. They did this in the subconscious hope that he might take the hint. Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of 47.

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.

Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and an Internet connection can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be.

All the countries had enough to pay for these enormous protective walls, and nobody thought about war. They only armed themselves 'just in case' – because rich people like to see steel walls around...

The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low.

We have made some progress, thought Gladstone, despite the inertia forced upon us by the Core. Despite the near-death of science. Despite our fatal addiction to the toys granted us by our own...

I'm not so sure innocence exists anymore.

Somehow it seems wrong to photograph a blind person. It's like stealing something valuable they don't even know they own.

That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

The common people? Pah. What are they to us? You and I, my friend, we are lords of the earth, the great ones, the major men, the makers of supreme fictions.

But why can't everyone have the memories? I think it would seem a little easier if the memories were shared. You and I wouldn't have to bear so much by ourselves, if everybody took a part. The Giver...

Fame is a fickle friend, Harry. Celebrity is as celebrity does. Remember that.

The world's full of jackasses braying and they never bray anything but lies.

Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.

I think all men get a macho rise out of the idea of creating a baby on some level, but that doesn't mean they're happy when the big belly and dirty diapers come around.

Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

You are not like the others. I've seen a few. I know. When I talk to you, you look at me. Last night, when I mentioned the moon, you looked at it. The others never would. The others would turn away,...

Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what...

If money is a science, then it is a dark science... it has gone on developing... by its own rules

Religious institutions perpetuate a mortal master-servant relationship, they create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices!

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

I learned the tyranny of figures before I knew the value of a pound.

When I was young, my peers prepared to endure 20 years of hardship, and if fortunate, perhaps enjoy a bit more comfort in old age. Now, young people want to live well from the start. When it comes to...

Well, and you may have lived in the courts of the Old Lord, and you were accounted beautiful, but I have been a man's wife and I have borne him sons, and you are still a slave.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll...

And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, is "insane." To

Upper-class parents enable their kids to form weak ties by exposing them more often to organized activities, professionals, and other adults. Working-class children, on the other hand, are more likely...

George Washington chopped down the tree, and then he threw away the money. Do you understand? He was telling us an essential truth. Namely, that money doesn't grow on trees. This is what made our...

I've long tended to regard the interruption of complacency as a kind of public service.