If you only stand up for speech you approve of, you're a hack. If you only stand up for speech that everyone approves of, you're a coward.

One reason that a lot of people see me as cheerful and optimistic is that my expectations are really rather low.

Imagine what things would be like if the news media actually sided with civilization.

The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption — and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

Never trust anyone who calls himself a libertarian socialist. They're bound to be deeply confused, at best.

The proverbial thirteenth chime of the clock - is not only wrong itself, but calls into question everything that came before it.

That's the thing about conspiracy theories: in a comforting sort of way, they give rise to the feeling that someone, somewhere, knows what's going on.