6 quotes
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
An old definition of a gentleman: someone who is never rude except on purpose.
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves.
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.
Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)