Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries .

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter. But I think it's very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.

I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.