Thinking withdraws radically and for its own sake from this world and its evidential nature, whereas science profits from a possible withdrawal for the sake of specific results.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

To a writer, an open browser tab is like a glass of whiskey. 1 or 2 can help the work. Too many ensures that nothing gets done.

A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are.

The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels - in fact you have to.

Chaka Fattah already lost the seat in a Democratic primary. So, he's on his way out. And he formally resigned this week.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

As a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal - in all of those areas, I am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration with every fiber of my being.

Here is the alphabet of the pulsing apocalypse that is fatherhood, a book in love with what words, like parents, create: beauty, terror, awe.

If you are not capable of being alone, your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your loneliness, nothing else.

Poetry, I'm often told, is something made of words. I think it really goes the other way around: words are made of poetry.

Some people are contriving ways and means of making us collapse.