Especially after the 1973 “Yom Kippur” War, many Europeans, I suspect, sighed with relief that Jews could be aggressors, too. Jewish brutality relieved the burden of wartime guilt

You can increase your profits exponentially by putting an expiration date on all your equipment

Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen; the other 10 percent are helium. The rest of the universe is a rounding error

A Freudian slip is when we say one thing, and we mean a mother

The United States does not invade other countries because it wants their territory, but because it believes it is doing them a favour by exporting its own ideology

More British people voted in the UK reality TV show "Big Brother", than in the 1999 European elections

Like Facebook, the dollar may not be the best system around, but it's what everyone else uses

Why should we think of people from China as our fellows the minute they dwell in the United States, but not when they dwell in a certain other place, namely China?

The enjoyment we get from something derives from what we think that thing is. People find dog food succulent when it's labelled foie gras

Whisky is an industrial product rather than an agricultural one; the quality and other characteristics are standardised, and you know pretty much exactly how it’s going to taste at different ages. Whisky’s a bond, wine is an equity

Everyone needs someone to look down on, and the psychological need is the more urgent the more meritocratic a society becomes. This is because, in a meritocracy, a person’s failure is his own

One of the problems with skepticism is that you’re typically not in charge of your own agenda: you spend much of your time reacting to the claims other people make

Why does looking at animals covered in oil make me sad, but looking at animals covered in oil and deep-fried make me hungry?

Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die

The key problem with having spies is getting from them any useful information they may have picked up, and communicating with them to set targets

I can see why futbol is so big in Europe and Latin America. Largely arbitrary, controlled by officials who are in no way accountable to anyone, yet who are remarkably incompetent and indifferent. Everyone constantly pretends to be a victim, and rolls around on the ground crying until they get a subsidy they don't deserve

Foucault's leading ideas are not in themselves all that complex; just unusually difficult to render plausible

This memoir is an effective coming-of-age story, regardless of what one may think of the resulting adult

Effective political ideas are those that can still do good in half-baked form

War is simply a reversal of civilised life, its motto is “Evil be thou my good”, and so much of the good of modern life is actually evil that it is questionable whether on balance war does harm