“Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren’t interested in), people don’t speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.”

“There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.”

“There are two types of people in this world — those who think that there are two types of people in this world, and those who don’t.”

“The central fact for me is, I think, that the [role of the] intellectual … cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.”

“Speciesism—the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.”

“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”

“I don’t think Will Herondale and a sense of responsibility are even on speaking terms”

“The Unwanted Visitor visits those who don’t change and those who do. But those who did change can say: 'My life was an interesting one. I didn’t squander my blessing.’”

“I have no intention of slurring over the differences we have with socialism, nor concealing my belief that we are the National Party of Great Britain, representing not narrow class interest, nor the bigotry of the left wing intellectuals, but all those who support the British tradition of democracy, of personal freedom, of personal responsibility for one's own affairs and those of one's family, with the least possible interference from the State.”

“These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are … something else entirely.”