“In the wide, nasty family of authoritarian political ideologies, Islamism and fascism are not even first cousins, let alone identical twins. To speak as if they were is to blur factors that are morally and politically distinct.”

“Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill.”

“Over the decades, evidence concerning cognitive deficits in brain-damaged patients has accumulated, and researchers have concluded that we have a sense of number that is independent of language, memory, and reasoning in general.”

“Does anybody really believe that in every other country around the world except the former Soviet Union, journalists never die from car crashes or suspicious suicides, never have untimely heart attacks or other fatal illnesses that can be connected to their work?”

“In a delicious historical irony, the baby boomers who dismantled the university’s intellectual architecture in favor of unbridled sex and protest have now bureaucratized both.”