An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.

I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors.

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos.

It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.

You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.

My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself We need more dissent and less dogma.

He's the President—it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.