I discovered early that as an artist there was absolutely nothing wrong with being surrounded by people who were not dedicated to your field.
Secularism does not accept many things as absolutes. Its principal objectives are pleasure and self-interest. Often, those who embrace secularism have a different look about them.
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
I add, that those who are bent on restoring the whole church ought to be well instructed in the word, and to abstain from doing anything under the pretext of simplicity.
I used to think that people just hate vegans; I have since discovered that everybody hates anyone who abstains from anything.
To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.
The Internet is an empowering force for people who are protesting against the abuse of power.
In my case, I got hit a lot by bullies when I was a child, and so I naturally bristle against anybody who abuses power. And that seems to make me rather persistent when it comes to exposing the abuse of power.
I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
I live in a post-Christian world in Oxford; it is quite rare to meet somebody who is religious in academic life now, and there is absolutely no tendency for rioting and mayhem, and it is extremely civilised.
I went to a very academically competitive high school. So I was always quite studious and quiet, just to keep up with the other geniuses who were in my school.
I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.
