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Credibility’ is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we’ll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.

Adam Gopnik

Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.
ADAM GOPNIK

Argument Since Editorial Good Mostly Side Winning Writing Your
We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. […]
ADAM GOPNIK

Assure Call Disaster Imagine Such Thing Unimaginable
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else’s fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors
ADAM GOPNIK

Believe Country Distance Error Fault Language Simple
Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
ADAM GOPNIK

Engage Lover Magic Magician Master Maze Mind Permanent Poet
We don’t know that we’ve lost half a minute from our lives but we feel it somehow, we feel its absence.
ADAM GOPNIK

Emotion Eye Feel Lost Minute Name Somehow Thinking
Wit and puns aren’t just décor in the mind; they’re essential signs that the mind knows it’s on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absence Bug Decor Essential Mind Missing Pun
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum
ADAM GOPNIK

Believe Country Encumbered Hangover Mediaeval Monarchy Reality
What we eat is the one simplest way to declare who we are – the table reflects our values with a clarity that few other theaters of human behaviour posses.
ADAM GOPNIK

Behaviour Clarity Declare Emotion Human Reflect Simplest Table Value Way
Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist…
ADAM GOPNIK

Book Contemporary Kid Knowledge Literature Long Oddest Unexpected
All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.
ADAM GOPNIK

Artificial Good Invented Little Quality Secret Taste
For all the years I’d spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I
ADAM GOPNIK

Art Idea Mistrust Poetry Spend Talk Talking Truth Writing Year
It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.
ADAM GOPNIK

Mercilessly Missionaries Mock Mormonism Pretension Truth Virtue
Writing well isn’t just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in
ADAM GOPNIK

Expression Found Question Say Something Strong Sweet True Winsome Word Writing
In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.
ADAM GOPNIK

Additional Bookstore Field Interest Out Stuff Usually Way
I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them.
ADAM GOPNIK

Concede Devotion Fanaticism Journalism People Thinking Understand Well
The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.
ADAM GOPNIK

But Easier First More One Second See Time Visible Visitor

Credibility’ is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we’ll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.

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Popular Authors

Credibility’ is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we’ll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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