9 William S. Burroughs Quotes on Society

William S. Burroughs quotes on society

5. A functioning police state needs no police. (p. 31)

7. Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror. (p. 201)

11. Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.

12. There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

16. A paranoid-schizophrenic is a guy who just found out what's going on.

17. America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.

18. Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

24. Heroin is a vitamin...don't let anyone tell you different heroin IS a vitamin...there's nothing in the game plan...that says that all vitamins have to be good for you.

46. There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.