“arriésgate a pensar por ti mismo encontraras mas felicidad, verdad, belleza y sabiduría”

“Sei que não sou o único que não se importa nem um pouco se ilusões religiosas forem ridicularizadas, mas se fosse o único, ainda assim não daria a mínima.”

“Por mais impiedoso e arrogante que o poder possa parecer, seus detentores são meros mamíferos que evacuam e anseiam e que sofrem de insônia e insegurança. Esses mamíferos são também necessariamente vaidosos ao extremo e muitas vezes desejam ser amados tanto quanto desejam ser temidos.”

“Um verdadeiro homem de fé deve acreditar que está aqui para um propósito e que é um objeto de real interesse para um Ser Supremo; deve também fingir ter pelo menos uma noção do que aquele Ser Supremo deseja. Eu próprio fui chamado de arrogante na juventude, e espero ganhar o título novamente; mas pretender conhecer os segredos do universo e seu criador - isso está além de minha presunção.”

“I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat's main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when Abu Nidal asked me if I would like to be trained in one of his camps. No thanks, I explained. From this awkward beginning there was a further decline. I was then asked if I knew Said Hammami, the envoy of the PLO in London. I did in fact know him. He was a brave and decent man, who in a series of articles in the London Times had floated the first-ever trial balloon for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. 'Well tell him he is a traitor,' barked my host. 'And tell him we have only one way with those who betray us.' The rest of the interview passed as so many Middle Eastern interviews do: too many small cups of coffee served with too much fuss; too many unemployed heavies standing about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with; too much ugly furniture, too many too-bright electric lights; and much too much faux bonhomie. The only political fact I could winnow, from Abu Nidal's vainglorious claims to control X number of 'fighters' in Y number of countries, was that he admired the People's Republic of China for not recognizing the State of Israel. I forget how I got out of his office.”

“The unspooling of the skein of the genome has effectively abolished racism and creationism, and the amazing findings of Hubble and Hawking have allowed us to guess at the origins of the cosmos. But how much more addictive is the familiar old garbage about tribe and nation and faith.”

“The literal mind is baffled by the ironic one, demanding explanations that only intensify the joke. A vintage example, and one that really did occur, is that of P.G. Wodehouse, captured by accident during the German invasion of France in 1940. Josef Goebbels’s propaganda bureaucrats asked him to broadcast on Berlin radio, which he incautiously agreed to do, and his first transmission began:Young men starting out in life often ask me—“How do you become an internee?” Well, there are various ways. My own method was to acquire a villa in northern France and wait for the German army to come along. This is probably the simplest plan. You buy the villa and the German army does the rest.Somebody—it would be nice to know who, I hope it was Goebbels—must have vetted this and decided to let it go out as a good advertisement for German broad-mindedness. The “funny” thing is that the broadcast landed Wodehouse in an infinity of trouble with the British authorities, representing a nation that prides itself above all on a sense of humor.”