On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

Politics is made up of two words: "Poli," which is Greek for "many," and "tics," which are bloodsucking insects.

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.

People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.

Astronauts: rotarians in outer space.