A Children’s Museum, however, is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.

Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.

All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

The mind forever turns on the lathe of its own contradictions.

You can imagine what the advisers are telling Junior Assad: "Your statues are much stronger than Saddam's. His were hollow, and bolted in place with inferior metal; yours are solid, and are anchored to a depth of three feet. Let the American tanks come! Their gears will strip and their engines whine in defeat as they attempt to pull down your statues!

I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.

If you think the ’80s were dumber than the ’70s, either you weren’t there or you weren’t paying attention.