I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.

It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the will.

As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.

You solve a problem not by eliminating the problem but by changing the perception and awareness of the problem.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind.

Even if the decisions one made on a given day seemed crazy, it helped to think that all things happened for a mysterious reason.

Man's natural life span, 75 to 90 years or so, has not increased. It is the number of us who manage to attain it that has increased.

War ends only when people love each other.

I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people.

Well I forgot how different it was because I've been here for about four or five years. It's a big load off my shoulders now. Now that I'm there, I'm like, man, I can breathe a little bit, you know?

We don't get our shoulds, we get our musts.