Ronald Firbank Quotes

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

I guess I'm struck all the time by how outrageously wrong life is. There are times I can't stand to read the newspapers. It makes me insane.

Till people find themselves greatly abused and oppressed by their governors, they are not apt to complain; and whenever they do, in fact, find themselves thus abused and oppressed, they must be stupid not to complain.

What offends me the most when I hear criticisms about this so-called Africa bias is how quick we are to focus on the words and propaganda of a few powerful, influential individuals, and to forget about the millions of anonymous people who suffer from their crimes.

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

The American People got fucked. Then tell 'em the American Family got fucked.

The starting point is a passionate anger at something that does not work very well.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which evokes more anger – businesses that know and care about nothing except profits or governments that know and care about nothing except power and paper-pushing. However, anger is not a solution. Anger attempts to shout down problems, and it never works.

You can see what happens when people don't feel they have a chance. You can see the ramifications of that.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us, 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'

Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain, while others are deeply unhappy with how things are but just accept the fact. Complaint occurs when we refuse to accept that things are wrong and we do something about it, even if that something is simply articulating our unease.

The more laws, the less justice.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.

It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.

Inequality doesn't create unhappiness.

As long as the wrong people hold power, how can the right political climate even arise?

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.