If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.

I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.

The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless.

The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad.

The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.

Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence.