“I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.”
Death“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.”
Food“The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.”
Great“Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.”
Attitude“Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.”
Technology“The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.”
Politics“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”
Experience“I think the materialist conception of history is valid.”
History“The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.”
Politics“There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.”
Faith“The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.”
Amazing“Even if I accepted that Jesus - like almost every other prophet on record - was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.”
Truth“I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
War“For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.”
Women“Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, 'Well, good on you. See you there.'”
Death“One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.”
Great“Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.”
Age“Well, I'll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.”
God“'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.”
Age“It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.”
Christmas“I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.”
Power