“You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.”

“Being a dick is when you're so self-centered, you think your ideas are pretty much the only worthy ones, and you secretly believe other people are inferior to you. [...] You'd rather believe other people just can't handle how awesome you are. And you're right. All that awesomeness sucks, actually.”

“I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.”

“It was if happiness and sadness cannot be felt at exactly the same time. You can look forward, or you can look back, but you can't look both ways at the same time.”

“The diverse natures of men, combined with the necessity to satisfy in some manner the sentiment which desires them to be equal, has had the result that in the democracies they have endeavored to provide the appearance of power in the people and the reality of power in an elite.”

“I knew there was a minefield ahead of me and no way to avoid the bombs, and even if you didn’t actually step on the bombs, you were already transformed by constantly looking out for them.”