James C. Scott Quotes

It's hard to see any institutional structure that stands in the way of the homogenization and simplification of these supply chains in international capitalism, unless it is the nation state.

The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly.

In a world of injustice there's going to be dreams of justice.

Finally I decided that since peasants were the largest segment of the world's population, it would be an honorable and worthy career to devote my life to the study of peasants and agriculture.

The world of rumor and gossip is like a privileged world with which a social scientist or an anthropologist can take the temperature of popular aspirations.

The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.

The larger the pile of rubble you leave behind, the larger your place in the historical record!

Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project, " a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation.