Demands that you believe the impossible do not lead to peaceful outcomes.

Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.

I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy 'legacy' is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and "torch-passing" rhetoric in general.

When the [US] president writes to Kim Jong Il, the son, the Dear Leader, he doesn't call him Dear Mr President, he calls him Dear Mr Secretary. Have you ever noticed that? Why is that? Because he's not the president of North Korea, he's the head of the Communist Party, the North Korean Workers' Party and he's the head of the Army. He's not head of the state. The head of the state is his father, who's been dead for 15 years.

Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us.