For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection – and usually a little judgment.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

I am not a televangelist.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

The very phrase ‚foreign affairs‘ makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect – in terror.

The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

If you look at ‚Blade Runner,‘ it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.

I’m not an expert on the arms race.

All art is quite useless.

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last, and truth will ultimately prevail.

In doubtful cases the more liberal interpretation must always be preferred.

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Information is not knowledge.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president – and the president alone – who always makes the final call.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

If you would judge, understand.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.