It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.

It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the will.

I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.

The unhappy people of the known paths must certainly try the unknown paths in their search of happiness!

To expand our life, be loving and kind.

Rock music sounds like an octopus making love to a bagpipe.

They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick.

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

I believe in prayer. I believe in gratitude and serving people.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

In order to be one of the greats, you've got to study the greats.

It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.

He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things.