My idea of good company ... is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I c...all good company.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful... citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is commonly said ... that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A tru...th learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humour, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stic...k where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humour, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Liberalism is too often misconceived as a new set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of priests called "liberals." Liberal...ism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas--an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives.... Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has.... Actual participation requires a total surrender, a co...ncentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »