I. F. STONE

Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

The only thing God didn't do to Job was give him a computer.

Rich people march on Washington every day.

Once the Secretary of State invites you to lunch and asks your opinion, you’re sunk.

All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.

I hate to say it but I was glad when they shot him. I don’t believe in terrorism or assassination but he could have become the American dictator.

If you live long enough, the venerability factor creeps in; you get accused of things you never did and praised for virtues you never had.

I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.

A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news.

Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.

… there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.

… societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.

The arms race is based on an optimistic view of technology and a pessimistic view of man. It assumes there is no limit to the ingenuity of science and no limit to the deviltry of human beings.

Every man is his own Pygmalion, and spends his life fashioning himself. And in fashioning himself, for good or ill, he fashions the human race and its future.

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

History is a tragedy, not a morality tale.

There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.

Victor Serge died in exile and obscurity, apparently no more than a splinter of a splinter in the Marxist movement. But with the passage of the years, he looms up as one of the great moral figures of our time, an artist of such integrity and a revolutionary of such purity as to overshadow those who achieved fame and power. His failure was his success. I know of no participant in Russia's revolution and Spain's agonies who more deserves the attention of our concerned youth.

You have to take the long view. First, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, man has already progressed to the point where a commandment against cannibalism was no longer necessary. And, second, it's like pissing on a boulder. For the first few thousand years, you don't see any effect. But after that, you start to see a definite impact.