20th-century Social Critic Quotes

Walter Benjamin

Michael Moore

Richard Pryor

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Lenny Bruce

Edmund Wilson

Lewis Black

I want us all to face our fears and stop behaving like our goal in life is to merely survive.

Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.

I was a nigger for twenty-three years. I gave it up—no room for advancement.

Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.

Walter Benjamin

For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into the masses. And where is the David who can slay this giant?

I feel the need to scream, and even if the scream is not answered, I find my sanity in the echo.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

Science rests itself not in the world the scientist beholds at any particular point in time, but in his mode of viewing that world. A man is a scientist not because of what he sees, but because of how he sees it.

Theodore Roszak

Depression and hopelessness are not the only reasons terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Many individuals see nothing undignified about choosing to end their lives at the time and manner of their choosing — and many view such a choice as the meaningful culmination of a good life.

One didn't really believe till one saw it demonstrated that giving oneself up completely to art, to emotion, to enjoyment, without planning for the future or counting the cost, produced dreadful disabilities and bankruptcies later.

The choice we face is not between progress with conflict and progress without conflict. The choice is between conflict and stagnation. … The totalitarians regard the toleration of conflict as our central weakness. So it may appear in an age of anxiety. But we know it to be basically our central strength.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

My comedy is a nuclear bomb inside my mind. It's a weapon that's never been tested. It just blows up and flattens everybody.

Paul Mooney (comedian)