Home / Quotes / Quote by William S. Burroughs

Quote by William S. Burroughs

“There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”

Quote by William S. Burroughs

Book:Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

Work

Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

This reader includes a selection of essays, interviews, and other works by William S. Burroughs, offering a deep dive into his literary contributions and philosophical musings. Burroughs' work is known for its experimental approach to language and its exploration of themes such as addiction, technology, and the human condition. more

Author

William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs was an American novelist known for his unique writing style and his significant influence on postmodern literature. His works often involve social criticism, political satire, and surrealistic elements. more

You May Also Like

“I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence.”

“The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.”

Source: On Liberty: Mill's Works

“Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme," not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.”

Men Should Reason Cases Seeing Objects Strange Speech Argument Extremes Free Speech Freedom Of Speech Validity

Author:John Stuart Mill

“A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.”

Humans Kind States Culture Social Moral Progress Conditions Population Improvement All Kinds Scope Social Progress Stationary

Author:John Stuart Mill

“If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.”

Ifs Law Universe Cases Conditions Accounts Laws Of Nature

Author:John Stuart Mill

“It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.”

Philosophy Might Past Social Sides Denied Both Sides Controversy

Book:Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical

Source: Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical

“Since reasoning , or inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words , and in complicated cases can take place in no other way: those who have not a thorough insight into both the signification and purpose of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly.”

Way Mean Purpose Chance Cases Subjects Logic Insight Complicated Certainty Operations Reasoning Principal Thorough Inference

Book:A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works

Source: A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works

“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

Source: The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill

“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

Wells Enough Whole Age Social Sex Female Absolutes Slavery Majority Slave Males Thinker Cultivation

Book:The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works

Source: The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works

“Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them.”

People Mind Facts Pain Form Father Grows Opinion Boys Growing Up Youth Son Capacity Mere Accepted Phrases Substitutes Incapable No Pain

Book:Autobiography John Stuart Mill: Top Biography

Source: Autobiography John Stuart Mill: Top Biography