If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Good has two meanings: it means that which is good absolutely and that which is good for somebody.

Aristotle

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.

Scott Adams

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Ansel Adams

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Rance: Were your relations with your secretary normal? Prentice: Yes. Rance: Well, Prentice, your private life is your own affair. I find it shocking none the less.

Joe Orton

The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.

J. G. Ballard

Well, darkness with humor... I'm not an extremely suicidal or sad person.

Peter Steele

It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book ] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.'Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as karmic reassignment) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)'I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of and .

Christopher Hitchens

I wish to bean inspector of volcanoes.I want to study cloud formationsand memorize the windand learn by heart the habits ofthe ponderosa pine.

Edward Abbey, Hayduke Lives

I concentrate on exercises from the waist down, since that is the laziest part of a woman's body.

Tina Louise

We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money, satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.

Lewis H. Lapham

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

James Madison