271 Quotes by E. P. Thompson

For a while, you hoped the thing would turn, you know? That one of the operations in one of those towns over there would set things straight -- or, especially, those elections. Those Iraqis showed up against guns to vote. I kept hoping something like that would change things around.

This going into Europe will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle-aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brussels hotel for a group grope.

Football and television are like the couple running in slow motion at each other on the beach. They form the perfect marriage.

At a certain point one ceases to defend a certain view of history; one must defend history itself.

It?s the same thing as insurance companies dragging their feet in paying physicians.

I don’t care tuppence whether I’m forced into a leadership position or not. I’d much sooner not.

There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or the East that is not active in some Indian mind.

The talk about balance, nuclear balance, seems to me to be metaphysical and doesn’t seem to be real at all.

I have become a prisoner of the peace movement. But you can’t say that the termination is coming and then say that you are going back to your own garden to dig.