Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.
Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed – in view of the overall shortage of time – by patience.
What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.
There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of “little guy” or “silent majority” rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.
Only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power.
When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen.
There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.
All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don’t know what they are talking about.
The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.
As I’ve said before, you can be an atheist and anything you like.
Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.
If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.
The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: “anima”-the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd.
It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.
In modern Greek history, there is a close relationship between national humiliation and political radicalization.
I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don’t think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn’t Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?
It’s called faith because it’s not knowledge.
The role of dissident is not, and should not be, a claim of membership in a communion of saints. In other words, the more fallible the mammal, the truer the example.