“Anyone who sees himself as a messiah, a superhuman entity, is either a psychopath or a crook. If he honestly believes that he is the messiah, he is a psychopath. If he recognizes the reality and yet uses messianism to control his followers he is a crook…This reality of psychopaths and crooks amongst the mystics … More Quote of the Day

“All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.” ― Umberto Eco

“If you’re afraid – don’t do it, – if you’re doing it – don’t be afraid!” ― Genghis Khan

Style To write just one antecedentless “that” Can produce syntactic absurdity That sprawls out across the page like a cat In a fog of feline obscurity Defining clauses set off by commas Mislead the meanings to mean what they don’t Making the text have textual traumas That should really do it in, but they don’t … More Style

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” ― Christopher Hitchens

“The wretched of the earth get no help from witch doctors, and when academic language gets beyond shouting distance of ordinary speech, voodoo is all it is.” ― Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Can one imagine a constitutional change in the US, declaring that all Anglo-Saxons worldwide are US citizens, while African-Americans and Hispanics are not? Well, perhaps Donald Trump can. Perhaps not.”—Uri Avnery, “Imagined Nations” http://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2015/12/29/imagined-nations/  

“There is a Talmudic saying in the ‘Ethics of the Fathers, ‘Don’t judge your neighbour until you can imagine yourself in his place.’ So, my first question when I deal with any issue related to the Israeli-Palestinian issue: What if we were in their place?”—Henry Siegman http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/07/end-occupation-henry-siegman-speaks-out-against-attack-on-gaza

“Fear, also hate, makes for a light finger on the trigger, especially in an atmosphere of rabid nationalism that is deliberately fanned by government spokesmen and the prime minister himself.”—David Shulman “Jerusalem: Why Should Things Not Get Worse?” http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/11/04/jerusalem-why-should-things-not-get-worse/