I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.

When I went to Czechoslovakia under the old Communist regime one day in the '80s, I thought to myself whatever I do, whatever happens to me in Prague I'm not going to use the name Kafka, I'm just not going to do it. I won't do it; it's so easy, everyone else does, I'm not going to. I'll write the first non-Kafka mentioning piece.

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.

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

People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.