The Opinion-Censors, who tell us what we must think, persuade only the dullest. The Topic-Censors, who tell us what we must think about, pass largely unnoticed. It is the Method-Censors, living and dead, who tell us how we must think, who hold us all hopelessly in their thrall.
There is always official doctrine, but it is unusual for the officials to be stupid enough to believe it.
Debunked, adj. Denied.
Don’t take this the right way.
Analogously to Benford’s Law, 90% of the annotations in a used book occur in the first twenty pages.
The good are not holy, and the holy are not good.
No one wants to live more than four or five stories up.
There is no institution, save the state itself, that guards free expression, and all such self-appointed guardians inevitably become enforcers of orthodoxy.
Munitions manufacturers exist because we want to war; cigarette manufacturers because we want to smoke; and manufacturers of lies and imbecilities because we want to believe them.
If you must have the last word, it’s because you need it, and if you need it, it won’t help.