I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

[Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore.

What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.

I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.

I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered.

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.