[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.

What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: 'Oh no, we're not.'

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.

To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police.

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.