Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.

If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street.

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.

I want a language that speaks the truth.

Taking life seriously requires taking death seriously.

'Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.

Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?