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Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!

— William S. Burroughs The Soft Machine (1961)

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More quotes by William S. Burroughs

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.

Naked Lunch (1959)

A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.

Friends magazine (1970)

Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets.

Naked Lunch (1959)

If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit disposition is untenable and Hell hath no vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.

The Place Of Dead Roads‎ (1983)

A functioning police state needs no police.

Naked Lunch (1959)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William S. Burroughs (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.