“News is only the first rough draft of history.”

In a free society these institutions must be wholly free – which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.

The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion.

Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

Tolerance of diversity is imperative, because without it, life would lose its savor.

Loyalty in a free society depends upon the toleration of disloyalty.

Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous.

Progress in the arts, in the sciences, in the patterns of social adjustment springs from diversity and depends upon a tolerance of individual deviations from conventional ways and attitudes.

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious.

It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.

Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious.

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin.

“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.

I am the vessel. The draft is God’s. And God is the thirsty one.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was born the same year I was drafted. … That’s a pretty scary thought.

The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers.

As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes,

I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can’t not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops.

The first draft of anything is shit.