All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years.

We can change the world, but not improve it, if we do not have peace.

Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture.

There is danger involved in combat sports, but this is the purest form of competition. It's all about finding the truth. When you put someone in a cage or a ring, you're going to find out the truth - not only about your opponent but about yourself as well.