It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into...

his own will always be seen as different

That is why I argued that to counteract the state of ignorance and stupidity that could bring to workers the mechanical nature of their tasks, education was indispensable and should be financed, for...

It was the women of Afghanistan, my mother believed, who - once they'd been granted access to books and education - would be the salvation of the country

Why the worst women should always attract the best men is something hard to fathom!

I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess that we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of...

They would claim that she was either delusional or naïve to the point of a learning disability.

That's what you should be worrying about. Idiots with all the money, plowing it into building a thing just because they can.

I don't mind doing awful things as long as somebody else does. I would totally jump off the bridge, thanks for asking.

The more things change, the more they stay different.

So now, in her day, he said, they were headed into androgenic, systemic, multiplex, seriously bad shit, like she sort of already knew, figured everybody did, except for people who still said it wasn't...

the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not.

A brigand, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a boy whore. With such do we defend the realms of men.

When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which...

Old enough to remember the arrival of 'Have a nice day', Patrick could only look with alarm on the hyperinflation of 'Have a great one'. Where would this Weimar of bullying cheerfulness end? 'You have...

The prostitute became uncomfortable -- as if 'talk' were in a category of aberrant behavior, short of which she drew the line. 'You have to pay more for that,' the redhead said. 'Talk can go on for a...

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves. Critic John Berger's well-known quote has...

If both the positive and the negative consequences of an action fell on its author, our learning would be fast. But often an action's positive consequences benefit only its author, since they are...

Nation-states resemble war; city-states resemble commerce; families resemble stability; and individuals resemble entertainment

To work here with a good heart I'd been forced to smother the snob in me.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Although Lucifer had accelerated the process, it has begun decades earlier, when the coming of the jet age had triggered an explosion of global tourism

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn't have to be...

The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies - all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.

Stupid races don't build spaceships!

But one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.

it's easier finding a virgin in a whorehouse than an honest politician.

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for...

I have no idea how I managed to pass as normal in school, except that other people are generally caught up in their own lives and seldom notice despair in others if those despairing make an effort to...

New Rule: The White House doesn't have to release the dead Bin Laden photos, but don't pretend we can't take it. We've seen pictures of Britney Spears's vagina getting out of a car. Television has...