wisdom

"An American writer's intellectual energy ought to focus on American interests, first. Personal probity demands it! Otherwise, the columnist is a fifth column."

"I think the truth is always simple. It has pretty much got to be. It needs to be simple enough for a child to understand. Otherwise it'd be too late. By the time you figured it out it would be too lat…"

"There is oftentimes a great deal of knowledge where there is but little wisdom to improve that knowledge. It is not the most knowing Christian but the most wise Christian that sees, avoids, and escape…"

"You, too, have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don't tell me. I don't want to know them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them. I…"

"No one has officially told me that I have lost the Tory whip. The fault’s probably mine. I’m notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls: nobody knows my London number and I certainly …"

"I wanted Sandra to know that I thought her parents should be proud of her, and that we want to send a message to all our young people that being part of a democracy involves argument and disagreements…"

"Poddy’s greatest weakness—the really soft place in her head, she’s not too stupid otherwise—is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has unders…"

"The world knows me as a Khalifa and all they have heard from me is the message of Islam. I am doing my job and the opponents can carry on with theirs; does it even make a difference?"

"Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The w…"

"All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another."

"I think this is part of the female gaze…We are used to being watched, so why not watch ourselves, and why not enjoy it? Watching each other, excluding the visage of men—I can enjoy my sexuality."

"A prudent governor will not roughly oppose even the superstitions of his people, and though he may wish they were wiser, he will know that he cannot make them so by offending their prejudices."

"Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those wh…"

"People say 'Ooh, doesn't Lionel Blair look good for his age?' Well, no, not really – not unless he's about five hundred. Otherwise he looks like nothing more than an elaborately coiffured scrotum."

"The strange and wonderful Book of Job treats of the same subject as we are discussing; its contents are a fiction, conceived for the purpose of explaining the different opinions which people hold on D…"

"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."

"The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own."

"What can a man say about woman, his own opposite? I mean of course something sensible, that is outside the sexual program, free of resentment, illusion, and theory. Where is the man to be found capabl…"

"Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years."

"We are going to tickle some Aes Sedai under the chin, rescue a mule, and put a snip-nosed girl on the Lion Throne. Oh, yes. That's Aviendha. Don't look at her crosswise, or she'll try to cut your thro…"