It seems like cloud cuckoo land. If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the pound sterling, no! We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed on us.
In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.
Where and when have riots and anarchy been provoked by wise measures? If the government had acted wisely, and if their measures had met the needs of the poor peasants, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses?
Well the only course open to me is to be buoyantly bolshevik; and as I lie in bed this morning I reflect with a good deal of satisfaction that, because our rulers are as incompetent as they are mad and wicked, one particular era of a particular kind of civilization is very nearly over.
I count it a great error to count upon the genius of a nation as a standing argument in all ages.
I didn't set out to make it about any one particular government or regime. It's an allegorical film, but there are certain things I've obviously put in there that you can take.
We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.
Faith: in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.
Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established.
When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law. Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles. We too need education in the obvious, to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.