Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising.

If you're a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person.

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.