Socrates was likewise right that pissing people off is how we first, and maybe best, go about the business of provoking thought.

Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.

Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.

We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.

If anyone is tweeting right now, I'm not pulling a knife on David Cronenberg!

I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?

Dreams are evidence that we are creatures who produce more meaning than we can ourselves understand.

We are capitalism made flesh.

We don't know what the future will bring, but that's because we are ever in the process of creating it, not because it is an alien force to which we have to submit.

Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

It is such a strange fact that memories of people are more loyal and more faithful than the people themselves! When a person dies or leaves us, his memories yet stay with us!

Knowledge is beautiful but wisdom is magnificent.

Imagine staying awake all night not because you're worried about the future but because it's FUN

It is what the Taoists say: The way to do is to be.

The primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority of the poor.

I like having a routine, because everything else is so unpredictable.

I think I'm in control of what I do and what I've done. I think that's the ultimate feminine power. Do as you want.

The glory that was Lincoln's never died when he was slain.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.