The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.

The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.

Rosa Luxemburg was - still is for me - a great personal and intellectual heroine. Her analysis of Leninism and capitalism and social democracy are all worth reading. I wouldn't consider anyone truly politically literate if they hadn't given her work at least some study.

I've noticed that the more flooding there is, the more bullshit gets talked. I mean it was very noticeable in the Asian tsumai. It happened around Christmas-New Year. The Muslims of Sri Lanka said 'We knew this would happen because the Christians were using alcohol for their Christmas celebrations.' The Buddhists said 'We knew this would happen because of the horrible Muslim slaughter practices.' It's amazing to see how apocalypse or catastrophe makes people behave primitively.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.

But you'll notice, you will notice that Russia and China, invariably at the United Nations, move to block American action, to repress or hem in or punish other kinds of outlaw. Who stands behind Mugabi at the United Nations? Russia and China do. Who tried successfully to prevent the United Nations from speaking with one voice on its most signal violation of its resolutions, Iraq? Russia and China, again. North Korea the same. Burma the same.