I guess my claustrophobia is incurable - feeling, as I tend to, ill at ease in any closed room, and always tempted to find out what is on the other side of the door.

You cannot have a cake and eat it too. Either you eat it, or you have it.

Freedom is the slogan of the strong, who feel self confident, self sufficient to do it alone.

I suspect that the peer-review system carries a good part of blame for the fact that something like sixty percent or more of journal articles are never quoted (which means leaving no trace on our joint scholarly pursuits), and (in my reception at any rate) the "learned journals" (with a few miraculous exceptions that entail, prominently, TCS) ooze monumental boredom.

Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas.

You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

Never paint epic canvases during the revolution, because the revolutionaries will tear them apart.