The Left has become Death, the destroyer of our world.

 

Where there is ideology, there will be schism.

 

Often the more you understand the less you forgive.

• (quoted by P. J. O’Rourke as an epigraph for his book Holidays in Hell.)

 

Christianity was begotten by a vulgarized Hellenism upon a sentimentalized Judaism.

 

Religious people say, “If you don’t believe in God you’ll believe in anything.” I say, “If you can believe in ‘God’ you can believe in anything.”

 

What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

It profits him the whole world.

 

“Love thy neighbor.”

If you do, the commandment is superfluous.

If you don’t, it’s futile.

 

No one has yet discovered what makes life, what “life” is. The god explanation is not merely unsatisfactory, it is indefensible.

I, me …  this bundle of congenial accidents; this hunger for existence; this dread.

 

Opening of a letter to my biographer:

“Dear Avenging Angel …”

 

The fatter the government, the thinner the people.

The more generous the government, the more robbed the people.

The more secure the government, the more threatened the people.

 

Justice is elusive but judgment is inescapable.

 

The Roman writer Terence said, ‘Nothing human is alien to me.”

Why can’t I say the same? So much that people do remains incomprehensible to me.

 

I, a White African to black Africa: My prejudice was for you; my judgment is against you.

 

He serves society best who best conserves himself.

 

There’s a deal  of condescension in compassion and a deal of contempt in condescension.

 

Curse: May you survive to live in the world of your ideals.

(Probably plagiarized from a Chinese sage.)

 

Many a belief can survive persecution but not critical examination.

 

A good thing about life is that it has no purpose.

 

Socialism is deeply and fundamentally unjust. It punished those who are inventive, courageous, industrious, and useful, and rewards those who are incompetent, cowardly, idle, and useless.

 

Sado-Marxism …

 

Russia cast off the Soviet Union and revealed itself to be much the same. A wolf in wolf’s clothing.

 

We are more likely to believe what we overhear than what we’re told.

 

Why do blessings come in disguise?

 

Searching for your true self? How do you know which is your true self – the seeker or the sought?

 

Nothing is as readily accepted and as carefully kept as a grievance.

 

I ask my peers and find general agreement; it’s not that we’re going to die troubles us most, but how.

 

To a writer:

A reader is a reluctant visitor to your mind. He will not enter your labyrinth unless you bait the path with fascination. His wonder, his curiosity must be aroused, or his amusement.

 

Comes a Marxist, comes twaddle.

 

A writer needs to know that he has weaknesses, vices.

An actor only needs to know that other people have them.

 

Charity is okay, but only when practiced by consenting adults in private.

 

I often feel lonely but seldom want company.

 

Some are born ordinary, some achieve ordinariness, and some have ordinariness thrust upon them. I can’t think of anyone who’s had ordinariness thrust upon him. But I do know lots of people who’ve achieved ordinariness. They were geniuses until they were five and then became ordinary for the rest of their lives.

 

As attractive as a scandal

As complex as an animal

As simple as a blow

 

Wither is what I do, not where I go

 

It is a sound principle not to do harm. Beyond infancy no one can achieve so impossibly high an aim, but it is good to try.

 

Trying to reason with a Believer is like trying to crack an egg on a pillow.

 

Many “principles” that people hold are not principles but pieties.

 

Hell is a collective operation.

Heaven depends on private enterprise.

 

Most of us restrain ourselves from doing our worst most of the time. That much we can fairly claim for ourselves in the way of virtue. Laws are the best bridle, though far from infallible. Does nothing else hold us in check? Yes – fear that they might do unto us what we would like to do unto them.

 

The value of human life cannot be measured: human life is itself the measure of all value. Trying to measure it is like trying to measure the wetness of water.

 

Human life as such has no goal, no theme, no point, no plan, no program, no meaning. History is a soap opera.

 

Jillian’s Law:

Whatever a government does it does badly.