There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.

The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.

If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.

It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.