The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.

For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.

The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear.

If the decline of Christianity created the modern political zealot - and his crimes - so the evaporation of religious faith among the educated left a vacuum in the minds of Western intellectuals easily filled by secular superstition. There is no other explanation for the credulity with which scientists, accustomed to evaluating evidence, and writers, whose whole function was to study and criticize society, accepted the crudest Stalinist propaganda at its face value. They needed to believe; they wanted to be duped.

Human beings are infinitely worth studying, especially the peculiarities that often go along with outstanding gifts.

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.