“First, guilt-tripping doesn’t work as a campaigning strategy. If you make people feel bad about what they do, you must give them a realistic and feasible alternative. Second, pragmatism beats purism. Every time.”

“never feel guilty about anything shame and guilt are a waste of time just do what you do-- and deal with it”

“when we do what is known to be wrong, two negative things happened. First, we feel guilt and this guilt eats away confidence. Second, other people sooner or later find out and lose confidence in us”

“I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established that one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy--once you have these in place, you are set to go.”

“You give frequent flyer miles with that guilt trip?”

“It's bad idea to try to prevent people from knowing their own history. If you want to do anything new you must first make sure you know what people have tried before.”