37 quotes
Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.
Odyssey (2006)
Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.
Odyssey (2006)
Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.
Odyssey (2006)
If you're right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.
Odyssey (2006)
Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.
Odyssey (2006)
Yes, it was not journalism’s finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been.
Odyssey (2006)
Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.
Odyssey (2006)
Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.
Odyssey (2006)
(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered.
Odyssey (2006)
He was a decent enough guy, but he was always at his worst when he was trying to be sincere.
Odyssey (2006)
Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there’s a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don’t like it very much.
Odyssey (2006)
The Reverend Pullman sat on the opposite side of the bench, wearing clerical garb and one of those unctuous smiles that proclaims a monopoly on truth.
Odyssey (2006)
The earliest religious feeling MacAllister could recall was being annoyed at Adam, because it was his fault that girls subsequently had to wear clothes.
Odyssey (2006)
There is no justice. There are occasional acts of vengeance, or regret, but there’s no real justice. In the natural scheme of things, it is not possible.
Odyssey (2006)
“The media have gone berserk.”
“The media always go berserk. A kid falls off a bike in Montana, they’re all over it. Until something else happens.”
Odyssey (2006)
The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.
Odyssey (2006)
It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.
Odyssey (2006)
The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.
Odyssey (2006)
It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.
Odyssey (2006)
MacAllister commented recently that Plato was right, that democracy is mob rule, that the voters can be counted on consistently to find the candidate with the fewest scruples and put him in office.
Odyssey (2006)