Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

I don't deny or affirm anything. I'm not very personal.

You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.

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.

The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.

The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.