What are the "maximum" limits of acceptance of the term "intellectual"?

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters

What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.

The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

To tell the truth is revolutionary.

Indifference is the dead weight of history.

Every State is a dictatorship.

Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.

All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

The moment of existence is miraculous.

The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams.

Keep your sense of humor. There's enough stress in the rest of your life to let bad shots ruin a game you're supposed to enjoy.

One cannot make oneself but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else.

A leading authority is anyone who has guessed right more than once.

Chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow, sing a song, don't be long, thrill me to the marrow.

I argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.

There is no there---there is only here.

No one remembers who came fourth.

I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography.