Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best - monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants.

The phenomenal success of the recovery movement reflects two simple truths that emerge in adolescence: all people love to talk about themselves, and most people are mad at their parents. You don't have to be in denial to doubt that truths like these will set us free.

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

I do what I do because I have a compulsion to hold forth. I don't spend a lot of time, if any, thinking about the effect my work is going to have on the world. And I have an abiding mistrust of people who think that they're going to change the world. I think that people who think that they're going to change the world are the kind of people who put bombs on airplanes.

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

I don't think of myself as having a particular role. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living essentially by expressing my opinions. But, you know, I think the world would manage quite well if I weren't doing it.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.