Quote collection
653 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss."
"Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science."
"We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery."
"The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."
"most of my wandering in the desert i've done alone. not so much from choice as from necessity - i generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. i find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time."
"Except for the scale of the operation, there was nothing unusual about Hitler's massacre of the Jews. Genocide's an old tradition, as human as mother love or cherry pie."
"War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers."
"I've wrecked and ravaged half my life in the pursuit of women, and I suffer the pangs of about seventeen regrets -- the seventeen who got away."
"The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State."
"Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*."
"What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'"
"Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid."
"Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)"
"Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?"
"We spend more time working for our labor-saving machines than they do working for us."
"Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position."
"The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny."
"If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality."
"A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon."
"Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything."