“The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire”

“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.”

“If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do.”

“Fire is not a thing. It is a situation of temperature.”

“I’m not a consumer, because consumers are consumed with shopping. No, I prefer shoplifting.”

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”