“Pretending to be crazy works really well until you run into someone pretending to be sane.”

“When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane”

“Though we could become learned by other men’s learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom.”

“He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life.”

“When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”

“Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis”

“From the moment that they form part of a crowd, the learned man and the ignoramus are equally incapable of observation.”

“One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.”

“As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is... [More]”

“The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.”

“To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.”

“The Greatest Obstacle to Discovery Is Not Ignorance—It Is the Illusion of Knowledge.”

““The Law of Implicit Interfaces”: Given enough use, there is no such thing as a private implementation. That is, if an interface has enough consumers, they will collectively depend on every aspect of the implementation, intentionally or not. This effect serves to constrain changes to the implementation, which must now conform to both the explicitly documented interface, as well as the implicit interface captured by usage. We often refer to this phenomenon as “bug-for-bug compatibility.””

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

“We live in an oligarchy, but with the humidity, it feels like a dictatorship.”

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

“Lyndon B. JohnsonWe have rescued a magnificent and meaningful treasure from the chainsaw. For once, we have spared what is enduring and ennobling from the hungry and the hasty and the selfish act of destruction. The redwoods will stand because the men and women of vision and courage made their stand, refusing to suffer any further exploitation of our national wealth, and greater damage to our environment or any larger debasement of that quality and beauty without which life itself is quite barren.”

“Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don’t have passports, don’t live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even... [More]”

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”

“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.”

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.[1]”

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

“The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”

“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”