Technologies are not neutral: they come with attached agendas, with associated ways of thinking. Industrial revolutions are inherently political revolutions.

New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world.

Watering down the currency of expression, causing anything to mean whatever you want it to mean, until nothing is meant and nothing is precise.

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...

It rankled her that people richer than she were so often less worthy and attractive. More slobbish and louty. Comfort could be found in being poorer than people who were smart and beautiful. But to be...

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.

I went to see the Beatles last month... And I heard 20,000 girls screaming together at the Beatles... and I couldn't hear what they were screaming, either... But you don't have to... They're screaming...

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,...

attacking a Time correspondent for having wounded

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...

Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot. Not enough roads for the number of people. Fairlanes, Inc. is laying new ones all the time. Have to bulldoze...

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.