The US no longer does decisions. It can neither stop the drug traffic nor legalize it. It can neither win wars nor abandon them, neither make money nor stop spending it, neither stop immigration nor assimilate the immigrants. Washington can beat its thumb with a hammer, yes, and notice that it hurts, but it can't stop beating its thumb. That would take a decision, and Washington doesn't do decisions.

I may think that hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better than to poke their nest.

Those who wash regularly should not stoop to democracy.

Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of the levers of power.

Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.

The proper response toward what we occasionally imagine to be democracy, methinks, is to retain one's self-respect by not participating in it.

When someone tells me that 'the Almighty told me to do this', I want to see the transcript.