Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

Genius is childhood recaptured.

If you assume any rate of improvement at all then the games will become indistinguishable from reality. It would seem to follow that the odds that we are in base reality would be one in billions.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their oscillated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.

The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.