Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the . However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it.

Christopher Hitchens

When I came to New York, I began to meet the people who became the most famous artists of our time. I was insecure about my own level of ability, I didn't know whether I could compete with these people and, at the same time. I was wondering what is this anyway?

Henry Flynt

History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.

Victor Hugo

Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

Maximilien Robespierre

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

Karl Popper

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

John Donne

In our sad condition our only consolation is the expectancy of another life. Here below all is incomprehensible.

Martin Luther

Someone said that inflation is like jumping off the top of the Empire State Building. The sensation is great as long as you keep on going.

David H. Scott

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.

William Ralph Inge

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Ambrose Bierce

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.

W. H. Auden

I can talk to my dad like he's my manager, and put 'Dad' on the back burner. We've been doing it since I was 13.

Jessica Simpson