You have to take the long view. First, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, man has already progressed to the point where a commandment against cannibalism was no longer necessary. And, second, it's like pissing on a boulder. For the first few thousand years, you don't see any effect. But after that, you start to see a definite impact.

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

When you're young, you get blamed for crimes that you didn't commit. When you are old, you get credit for virtues that you never had. I guess it all evens out in the end.

If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

Victor Serge died in exile and obscurity, apparently no more than a splinter of a splinter in the Marxist movement. But with the passage of the years, he looms up as one of the great moral figures of our time, an artist of such integrity and a revolutionary of such purity as to overshadow those who achieved fame and power. His failure was his success. I know of no participant in Russia's revolution and Spain's agonies who more deserves the attention of our concerned youth.