Thom Yorke Quotes

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

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

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.

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

Under capitalism we have a state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another.

The collectivizations and socializations in the economy count for nothing when State power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.

Those who suffer are not those at the top, but are the less privileged members of society.

Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

Elites always tell poor people, “Work hard and play by the rules.”

A revolution [is] not a single act, but rather a chain of collisions and conflicts with the ruling class, which is never ready to submit itself to the will of a democratic majority, but rather defends its predominant position with all means at its disposal, with the help of the powers which the state has built up—the army, the police, the courts and the church

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

I look at that fellow. I watch his smart-alack manner and his British clothes and that New Dealism, everlasting New Dealism in everything he says and does, and I want to shout, Get out, Get out. You stand for everything that has been wrong with the United States for years.

The masses are absolutely being manipulated by those in power.

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

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.

Extensive and organized power over large populations does not suffice to make a nation

For if from the vantage point of a particular class the totality of existing society is not visible; if a class thinks the thoughts imputable to it and which bear upon its interests right through to their logical conclusion and yet fails to strike at the heart of that totality, then such a class is doomed to play only a subordinate role.

The lower middle classes as well as the peasants, … always side with the strongest

If there is a class war—and there is—it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.

Not a single Arab ruler is a willing participant in democratic reform. Their regimes are festooned with opportunists attached to their financial and political privileges.

You cannot trust the interests of any class entirely to another class; and you cannot trust the interests of any sex to another sex