The museums of medieval Europe, from Holland to Tuscany, are crammed with instruments and devices upon which the holy men labored devoutly, in order to see how long they could keep someone alive while being roasted. It is not needful to go into further details, but there were also religious books of instruction in this art, and guides for the detection of heresy by pain.

It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

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

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.