To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.

If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination.

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege.

As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.

The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die.

It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing what the heart wants to do.

There are four things a child needs: plenty of love nourishing food regular sleep and lots of soap and water.

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

Comic timing is something you are either born with or do not have.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor

The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films.

Caroline, do you value your neck?" "Yes, I'm rather fond of it. Why?" "Because if you don't shut up, I'm going to wring it.

As a footballer's wife, I take great exception to the way we are portrayed in Footballers' Wives.

I am who I am. I'm going to speak my mind.

I left the government because I saw the only way to get family planning moving, was to do it outside the government. I was never disillusioned with government.

As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought And fanned the dreams it never brought.