Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.

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.

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

Courage is the essential element in any great public man or woman.

Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.

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

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.