“Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements.”

“Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they had been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities. Without that desperately needed legitimacy, the dictators cannot continue to rule indefinitely.”

“A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.”

“We see a promise as a personal law, and we see the people who break them as private-life criminals. We think it automatically, one of those truths that just is to us: breaking a promise is a bad, bad thing. A promise can be as buoyant as whispered words or solemn as a marriage vow, but we view it as something pure and untouchable when it should never be either of those things. If a promise is a personal law, a contract, then it ought to be layered with fine print, rules and conditions, promises within those promises, and whether we like it or not, it ought to be something we can snatch back, that we should snatch back, if those rules are violated.”

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

“It may be bad for you, but government has no role in dictating our lives. People should be free to imprison themselves.”