"Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists."

“Dogs, bless them, operate on the premise that human beings are fragile and require incessant applications of affection and reassurance. The random lick of a hand and the furry chin draped over the instep are calculated to let the shaky owner know that a friend is nearby.”

“I love con-men characters in film.”

“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consiousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would crate such a complex and fancy worm food?”

“Taste is the feeling that permits one to tell the difference between what is beautiful and what is merely spectacular.”

“I have told somebody in court that 'I understand yours is the most important case in the world, and I'm trying to treat it as the most important case in the world, but five minutes from now I'm going to be dealing with the next person's most important case in the world.' For every litigant, theirs is the most important case.”

“It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.”

“Israel has a sizeable nuclear arsenal and could retaliate if it were attacked.”

Source : "A War With Iran: Rhetoric Or A Reality?". "All Things Considered", www.npr.org. March 10, 2012.

“These are the multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt.”

Source : "For Ahmed Ben Bella, the liberation of the people in the South is still unachieved". Interview with Silvia Cattori, www.voltairenet.org. May 9, 2006.