Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.

More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.

No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.

When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.

If our knowledge is, as I believe, only an island in an infinite sea of ignorance, how can we in our short lifetime find satisfaction in exploring our little island? How can we persuade ourselves to be exhilarated by our meager knowledge and yet not be discouraged by the ocean vistas?

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will is a shapeless world.