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

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

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.

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.

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

Every man you see upon the earth has some value within him already, hence you should treat every man you come across on earth with that worth and appreciation.

I have the best job in the world.

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.

Every dollar I can't commit to my company that's paid in taxes is paying a government that I believe is too big and doing way too much that I don't want done.

Artists know failure. It is not tragic that they know failure; it is only tragic if they know failure and little else.

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.

I dissolved, so white, so unapproachable, amid my white flame, in the whiteness of moonlight

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.

Without TVXQ, I wouldn't be like myself, who I am today

The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one's head.