What makes people imagine that "the best we can do" is any good at all?

It is a mild defect of computers that they imitate humans imperfectly, and a grave defect of humans that they cannot imitate computers at all.

It is to what we now call manic phases that we owe a great part of the imperishable works of human civilization.

The nostalgia is not for poverty but for the social bonds that poverty demands and cements.

The war is not against men, or against women, but against the fact that there are both men and women. Dimorphism is the enemy.

Young poet: Shakespeare never blotted a line.
Ben Jonson: Would he had blotted a thousand.

Everyone's a tourist on the internet.

People will swallow just about any story. Only when it's not a story do we refuse to swallow it.

Censorship, like any other government function, can be outsourced.

A true theory can become widely accepted, as long as it's not too obvious.

Instead it was opium that became the religion of the masses.

Suicide will never be common; it requires imagination.

It has always conferred status to consume tax revenue, and opprobrium to produce it.

The two worst generations are the next one and the last one, in that order.

Problems without solutions do less harm than solutions without problems.

All motives are base; some actions are noble.

Feelings of inferiority are usually benign and amply justified; it's feelings of superiority that are the menace.