Quotes
- There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.
- Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.
- I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called 'the significant trifle'- the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.
- The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.
- A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.
- All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.
- Lifelong dissent has more than acclimated me cheerfully to defeat. It has made me suspicious of victory. I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.
- I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.
- Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
- If you think you know what the answer is, you haven't asked a big enough question.
- The only thing God didn't do to Job was give him a computer.
- You may just think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive.
i. f. stone
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