“[...]
Eppure non voglio che sia condanna
alle Tue opere
questo mio salmodiare
sconsolato. Tu sei la sorpresa
orrenda, l'insidia
sempre tesa, onde
non è concesso investigare
cosa maturi
ogni notte
il sangue.
[...]”
Source: O sensi miei...: Poesie 1948-1988
“Quelli che credono in Dio non dovrebbero usare argomentazioni logiche per sostenere la loro fede, perché Dio esiste al di là della logica e della ragione.”
Source: The God Desire
“Remember that it is 'free-thinking Jews,' not Jews as such, who are defined as the undesirables by T.S. Eliot in After Strange Gods.”
Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry.”
Source: Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
“All of a sudden, I feel like a mouse that the cat is playing with for a few more moments before the defenseless little rodent is finally wolfed down.
And the worst thing is that I don’t care at all.
Play with me, eat me, if you only kiss me first …”
Source: Returning Home to Her
“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or is still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”
“Both fascism and communism [in the 20th Century] were responses to globalization: to the real and perceived inequalities it created, and apparent helplessness of the democracies in addressing them. Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people. They put a face on on globalization, arguing that its complex challenges were the result of a conspiracy against the nation.”
Source: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
“...the true assassin of a viral lie is not rigorous fact-checking. It is, ultimately, fatigue.”
Source: The Great Indian Brain Rot : Love, Lies and Algorithms in Digital India
“Maggie and Katy found themselves trapped. 'Soon it went so far and so many persons had heard the 'rappings' that we could not confess the wrong without exciting very great anger on the part of the those we had deceived So we went right on," Maggie would explain forty years later.”
Source: The Reluctant Spiritualist: A Life of Maggie Fox
“There will always be a war between light and darkness, between science and superstition, between education and ignorance. Ignorance is easier. It requires no study. Faith is the enemy of thought.”
Source: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols: Adapted from the Journals of John H. Watson, M.D.