The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

To be great is to assume great concerns.

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for, or whether you vote at all.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you