Richard O'Brien Quotes

It is property which has made tyrants and not tyrants property.

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.

The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss.

It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's still the same billionaires that run the world.

American conservatism depends on its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making connections about the world, connections that until recent were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

I'm free - but I'm also not free because there are millions of young people living in Iran. A filmmaker can only do a little.

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

There are contradictory tendencies in American society. There's a huge range of activities that one can engage in that mark it as a quite free society. It's also true to say that the powers that be have so much control over how people think that there are fewer and fewer people who make use of the rights and information available to them.

We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

I don't like the idea that the government has so much of a say in things.

The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.

Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.

'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.

Old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

The state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.

Intellectual slavery ... will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

You may rob the army of its commander-in-chief, but you cannot deprive the humblest peasant of his opinion.

Control would be exercised by a few over the political conduct of the many by first acquiring that control over the labor and earnings of the great body of people.

The masses in this country [Spain] are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy.