Perhaps I am not as wise as I like to think I am.

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.

As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.

Every great thinker is someone else's moron.