books

"The German and English Romantics got Spinoza wrong. Reading his superbly cryptic masterwork, the "Ethics," I find myself agreeing with Strauss that Spinoza pragmatically was an Epicurean materialist. …"

"An over-readiness to criticise or to depreciate a minister of Christ is proof of a lack of devotion to Christ."

"I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book"

"The older you get, the humbler you get. I know I don't have that much to offer, and I know I've now read Moby Dick and Anna Karenina, and if I had read those books before I wrote The Hottest State, I …"

"I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a we…"

"Corruption is a global problem. But it is more widespread in rapidly developing countries. It is a growth problem. There are many corruption-related problems in Russia too. So, regarding stress tests,…"

"It is certain... that to experience the Self we must follow a spiritual practice. Even to achieve something in daily life we have to work for it. We cannot satisfy our appetite merely by reading a des…"

"To Joseph Stalin: Stop sending people to kill me! We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast work…"

"Readers will recall that in the 1830’s, when colonialism and European imperialism was gaining ground in Asia and Africa, a British administrator named Lord Macaulay had made a similar remark to the ef…"

"What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you have to say?"

"“I will return to the books... Constantine is right; books are more merciful towards each other than people."

"We live in a world with "free" content, and this freedom is not an imperfection. We listen to the radio without paying for the songs we hear; we hear friends humming tunes that they have not licensed.…"

"Heat, ma'am!" I said; "it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."

"There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks o…"

"What I’m trying to do in all these novels is mirror a contemporary preoccupation. I’m not providing any solutions. I’m simply saying: ‘Can we please get the conversation going?’"

"Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentlemen's library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the l…"

"He liked slim books which he could slip into his overcoat pocket and leave there unread for months. What was the point of a book if you couldn’t carry it around with you as a theoretical defence again…"

"I have swallowed a secret burning thread."

"Armed drones have given the United States the power to kill individuals anywhere, even far from conventional battlefields, but the United States has failed to articulate clear limits on their use—let …"

"A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic."