I don't go out that much anymore, unfortunately. I used to enjoy it, but I'm just so busy. Like last night, everybody else went out, and I just went straight home and went to bed.
Where are the young people today? Why are they allowing some of the things that are happening in their country? I am really upset about that. I feel that they are burying their heads in the sand of electronic games and television. They don't want to know. Maybe they realize that their yuppie parents who protested Vietnam have turned on their ideals and are now struggling to buy a Lexus or whatever. These kids don't know what to revolt against, so they just completely ignore it, which is a very frightening thing.
I think social and moral disengagement is repugnant.
A lot of the time in modern Britain, certainly in urban life, we barely have any contact at all with the people around us.
We need to recognize that part our political problem is that we do not participate effectively, that we suffer from a kind of mental slumber.
I'm disappearing, avoiding most things.
When a society doesn't know what to do with its young, it's in real trouble. When the young don't know what to do with society - at the very least, revolutions start there.
I personally didn't go to any marches or anything like that. For me, all lives matter, you know what I mean?
Susan B. Anthony must be turning in her grave if she knew that millions of women who have the right to vote are not exercising it. Why? Because they haven't got the interest or the time, or they have just given up hope.
I know a lot of people who transitioned and dropped out of society for two years. They don't talk to anybody. They become hermits. They try to do everything alone.
How can you see that the pressure is getting to me? I think you can see me pull back more from the community around me.
My father got a trade union scholarship to Oxford; he lived and breathed politics; he was always watching current-affairs programmes. But I have a five-year-old child's attitude towards the news. Mainly, that it absolutely turns me off.
People simply don't make eye contact anymore.
I went through a period of pulling away from everything - acting, people - not sure if I would ever have a voice in this business.
To imagine secret societies and conspiracy is a way not to react to the social and political life. Because you say, "We don't know who they are. We cannot react without reasoning." So it is a way to keep people far from the political environment.
Social networking like Facebook or Twitter is very popular, but one thing I have found is that the more social networking tools you are using, the more alone you feel.
If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.
Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf.
Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.
I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.
Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people.
I don't even read social media.
Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
It's not social issues I care about.
