Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror? It's just an ocean of horror.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.