“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance…it is the illusion of knowledge.”

“It’s like you have a job interview and you discover every shirt in your closet is dirty. What do you do? You wear the least dirty one. That’s Karzai.”

“A host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

“Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts….Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rules of the exchange... [More]”

“I don’t think it’s America’s role to go into other countries and say ‘this is how we do things…so should you.’”

“Anyone who is critical of organized religion and, at the same time, invests in the stockmarket, is a hypocrite.”

“Dude, don’t try to cover your hate with numbers.”

“Of course you’re instantly a unit in Great Google’s Adword databank of commercial trickery and avarice – but if you’re cool with that, as I lazily am, the advantages are legion. I use Gmail as a hub for all my email accounts and I am hopelessly devoted to Google Calendars. The G1 had all my Google data installed and syncing within moments of connection.”

“What better way to control a man than by giving him the vote and telling him he’s free?”

“[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

“Never argue with idiots; they’ll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

“For once, it would be nice to hear a logical chain of reasoning that doesn’t include any leaps of faith, and isn’t based on the 100%-certainty of a guy whose proof is hidden behind a wall of national security. Especially when that guy’s been wrong every other time he’s opened his mouth. Any discussion that refers to a guy like that is a waste of time for everyone involved.”

“The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting.”

“But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. … Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human... [More]”

“The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.[…] learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to... [More]”

“A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.”

“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“My greatest regret is that, under our Constitution, the American people can have almost anything they want, but it just seems they don’t want much of anything at all.”

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

“Suprising, actually. He did quite well, coming back from … from fainting.”

“Where on earth did Putin get the idea that he could just manufacture a non-existent crisis, invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government just because he personally detests that nation’s leader?

“Oh. Never mind.”

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

“If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself.”

“There are two ways to live – one is to believe everything is a miracle, the second is to believe nothing is a miracle. I belong to the second group.”

“Question: What’s the only country that will never have a coup d’état?

“Answer: The United States, because they don’t have a U.S. embassy.”

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.

“Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey − don’t... [More]”

“Back in my COBOL days I came across a program with three GOTO statements in a row, all to the same place. I asked the original programmer why he did that, and he replied that he wanted to make sure it really went there.

“Oh. I guess he only wrote one GOTO when he didn’t really care if it went there or not.”