Anthony Daniels Quotes

It is easy to be lenient at other people's expense, and call it generosity of mind.

The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such as equality, leads to both absurdity and cruelty. The British are fast turning themselves into a nation of slaves, where even the slave-masters are not free.

Everybody uses mime and gesture in real life, though we don't realize it. It's very useful as a performance technique, though it can be boring to watch on its own.

For intellectuals, everyone's mind is closed but their own.

Nationalism is fraught with dangers, of course, but so is the blind refusal to recognize that attachment to one's own culture, traditions, and history is a creative, normal, and healthy part of human experience.

Modernity is the most transient of qualities.

They can see the character, standing before them. The voice became iconic in its own right. Parents often ask me to do it for their children, who don't quite believe them. After all, any old man can claim to be the guy inside the gold suit and kids are rightly skeptical.
'Hello, I am See-Threepio, human-cyborg relations.'
Then I see the magic. I watch as the sound enters their ears, it reaches their brain, it gets processed in moments. And suddenly. Smiles of recognition - and love.

within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities.

I quite like post-apocalyptic films, things like 'Mad Max' for instance, because they are so full on and there is something quite cleansing about the post-apocalyptic because you can see where we all think we're heading.

Two or three notes of music can instantly make you feel sad or tense or afraid or angry. To do that in words is much more difficult.

Equality is the measure of all things, and bad behavior is less bad if everyone indulges in it.

Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.

For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed.

If a lack of money had prevented people from improving their lot, then mankind would still be living in the caves: unless you believe that investment capital first arrived from outer space.

It is hard to oppose an ideology with a tradition.

[There] is no class so dangerous as the idle educated.

We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.

The intellectual's struggle to deny the obvious is never more desperate than when reality is unpleasant and at variance with his preconceptions and when full acknowledgment of it would undermine the foundations of his intellectual worldview.

In the modern view, unbridled personal freedom is the only good to be pursued; any obstacle to it is a problem to be overcome.

Mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.

Blanket compassion will shift the distribution decisively towards the manipulative end of the spectrum, and may paradoxically decrease the compassion with which the genuinely despairing are treated: for they are apt to get lost in the great mass of pseudo-distress and manipulation, and often their conduct draws less attention precisely because it is less attention-seeking.

Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man's mental or moral economy.

Cruelty is like hope: it springs eternal.

Children in school are not students, they are pupils. It is typical of certain kinds of politicians that they should regard children as adults, the better subsequently, and consequently, to regard adults as children.

Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.

If all our political and intellectual elite offers by way of a national culture is "pop music, gambling, fashionable clothes or television," then we can neither mount a convincing intellectual defense against our enemies, nor hope to integrate intelligent, inquiring, and unfulfilled Muslim youths young men principally, of course to our way of life.

Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease.

It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.

I don't do that many appearances at conventions. I like to keep them special for me. And for the fans, I hope.

The real and most pressing question raised by any social problem is: How do I appear concerned and compassionate to all my friends, colleagues, and peers?