"It has never seemed to me offensive that persons should be other persons' paid servants; but that other persons should be other persons' doctors, who are able to prescribe and refuse chemicals, has always seemed to me abominable."

"The basis of capitalism is that if a tiger rushes towards you, you need a gun. If you acquired a gun at some point in time previous to the tiger's attack, and have it ready to hand, this is useful. If you have not actually got a gun, but know that you could acquire one at some point in the future, this is not so good. The problem is to survive so as to reach the future. The essence of communism is that nobody may have guns unless everybody has guns, and the only way anybody can get guns is if the collective-at-large sees fit to make a universal issue. And you may not have a better gun than the collective sees fit to issue for everybody. So if the collective does not actually get round to issuing any guns at all, everybody will be equally likely to be eaten by tigers."

"Couched, of course, in tones of the utmost friendliness and benevolence, they unite in regretting that he [Somerset Maugham] was able to fulfil his own wishes."

"I spent a couple of years between eleven and thirteen analysing the social evaluations that were taken for granted, also acquiring a thorough scepticism about processes regarded as causal, and the consistency of the physical world, as well as the reliability of my own mental processes. By the time I was thirteen I was running out of things to think about, so starting on a run of exam-taking seemed all the more appropriate, as I was finding it difficult to make use of spare time."

"The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment."

"Only the impossible is worth attempting. In everything else one is sure to fail."

"The fact that something is far-fetched is no reason why it should not be true; it cannot be as far-fetched as the fact that something exists."

"Astonishment is the only realistic emotion."

"People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get."

"It is inconceivable that anything should be existing. It is not inconceivable that a lot of people should also be existing who are not interested in the fact that they exist. But it is certainly very odd."

"The remarkable thing about the human mind is its range of limitations."

"The human race has to be bad at psychology; if it were not, it would understand why it is bad at everything else."

"When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share."

"The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs."

"Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present."

"In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way."

"Democracy: everyone should have an equal opportunity to obstruct everybody else."

"When people talk about 'the sanctity of the individual' they mean 'the sanctity of the statistical norm'."

"In an unenlightened society some people are forced to play degrading social roles; in an enlightened society, everyone is."

"Society is everybody's way of punishing one another because they daren't take it out on the universe."

"'Social justice' - the expression of universal hatred."

"Society is a self-regulating mechanism for preventing the fulfilment of its members."

"Human nature: vindictiveness lightly coated with dishonesty."

"The human race believes in not taking its problems seriously enough to solve them."

"People having religions is an insult to the universe."

"People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it."

"The object of the educational system is to make the child feel suitably guilty for the harm that has been done to him."

"Education by the State is a contradiction in terms. Intellectual development is only possible to those who have seen through society."