The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.

Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.