Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.

Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union.

Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.

Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of... revolutionary avant-gardism.

Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

Force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.

To be a comedian: Make peace with the fact that you will never be as funny as a baby falling over.

What could an entirely rational being speak of with another entirely rational being?

To be honest, one must be inconsistent.

While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream.

The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.

My mother-in-law has so many wrinkles, when she smiles she looks like a Venetian blind.

I believe in the 12 Jewels and try to provide my childrem with them. That is Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, Freedom, Justice, Equality, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Love, Peace and Happiness.

I wouldn't describe myself as a master of anything.