“The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.”

“Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.”

“People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others.The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.”

“The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality.”

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

“A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.”

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”