“The shrill voices of those who give ordersAre full of fear like the squeakings ofPiglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arsesSweat with anxiety in their office chairs....Fear rules not only those who are ruled, butThe rulers too.”

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

“Knowledge is just a commodity. It is acquired in order to be resold. All those who have grown out of going to school have to do their learning virtually in secret, for anyone who admits the he has still something to learn devalues himself as a man whose knowledge is inadequate.”

“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life”

“For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.”

“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons.”

“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?In the books you will find the name of kings.Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?And Babylon, many times demolished.Who raised it up so many times? In what housesOf gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finishedDid the masons go? Great RomeIs full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whomDid the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled AtlantisThe night the ocean engulfed itThe drowning still bawled for their slaves.”