The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

Dissents speak to a future age.

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

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

There is no gambling like politics.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

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

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

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.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they’re built to be buoyant. It’s easy to demean them.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Ever since Newton, we’ve done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we’re now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

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

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

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

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

History is more or less bunk.