“Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But, of course, it is just easier to terrorise people.”

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.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

There’s never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it’s mostly a fabrication.

The soul, in its power, is present in some way in the entire universe, because it apprehends substances which are not included in the body in which it lives, although they are related to it.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.

Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method