The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient."

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.