Best of the Moment — Editor’s Highlights

Videos

Quotations

  • Timothy Snyder, on Germany 

    "Germans are behaving in Europe as red staters do in America. They profit from the larger union they think they want to undermine"

  • Kenan Malik, on belief

    "No one comes to believe in God because they have been convinced by the arguments for God’s existence"

  • Malcolm Gladwell, on theory 

    "People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open"

  • Aaron Bady, on knowledge 

    "Anyone claiming to be an expert is selling something. I brandish my ignorance like a crucifix at vampires"

  • Leon Wieseltier, on browsing 

    "When you search, you find what you were looking for; when you browse, you find what you were not looking for"

  • Alex Macbeth, on parliaments

    "The annual bill for operating the lower house of the Italian parliament costs as much as those of Britain, Germany, France and Spain combined"

  • Mark Lilla, on conservatism

    "Conservatism is informed by a view of human nature. Reaction is informed by a view of history"

  • Corey Robin, on conservatism 

    "Conservatism is a moral vision in which excellence depends upon hierarchy. Inequality is the means, not the end"

  • Moose Alain, on atheists

    "Atheists are unfaithful"

  • Paul Mason, on modern living

    "As we all know from our Blackberries, work invades leisure; but as we also all know from our iPhone, leisure invades work"

  • Tom Junod, on Newt Gingrich

    "If you base your entire candidacy on your ability to beat Barack Obama in a debate, you damned well better be able to beat Mitt Romney"

  • Jerry Leath Mills, on southernness

    "There is a simple litmus-like test for the quality of southernness in literature. Is there a dead mule in it?"

  • Charles Moore, on Alain De Botton

    "It is rather as if someone wrote about the joys of military parades without any conception that the job of soldiers is to fight"

  • Scott Adams, on fairness

    "Fairness is a concept invented so dumb people could participate in arguments"

  • Steve Chapman, on privacy

    "Barack Obama has been to civil liberties what the Hindenburg was to air travel"

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