“There were jokes under fascism and the Nazis too, but those systems did not create an absurd, laugh-a-minute reality like communism.”

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”

“What was achieved under Nazi-fascism through bloody terror against the organized workers’ movement and the people is to be achieved again today in West Europe through the “information society”

“One of the accusations made against the Pope is that he did not give a public and obvious denunciation of anti-Semitism during the Holocaust. It's a valid issue but one that is often discussed with too little understanding of the reality of 1940s Europe. Such explicit condemnations of Nazi anti-Semitism were not really made in London, Washington, or Moscow, but it's always assumed that Rome should somehow have been different, in spite of the fact that the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi or pro-Nazi troops and that millions of Roman Catholics lived under Nazi occupation whereas London, Washington, and even Moscow were relatively cocooned and the latter even comparatively safe.”

“Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.”

“That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.”