“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”

You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‘election.’

In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded.

It could be – and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don’t like it – that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

I didn’t pay my taxes for years.

There’s very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction – that is, the hatred and the anger.

The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money.

I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

I deal with this spiritual issue every day – either shooting or processing or sorting or discussing or having conversations – I’m in constant contact with it.

It does not take long to tell where a man’s treasure is. In fifteen minutes’ conversation with most men, you can tell whether their treasures are on the earth or in Heaven.

There is not a day that goes by that does not include a conversation with God. There is not a day that goes by that does not contain signs. There are many days that go by on which we do not hear the conversation, do not see the signs. So stay awake.

To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

The Higher Self is whispering to you softly in the silence between your thoughts.

The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange.