A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.

I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.