On smoking analogies

(…) Allen Carr likens the smoker to someone who wears tight shoes just for the pleasure of taking them off, and it is a good analogy. Smokers smoke for the pleasure of relieving nicotine withdrawal symptoms — symptoms that only smoking gives them. In other words, we spend a fortune, and take…

On poverty and the education of an intellectual

Thus, while the bourgeois young Sartre had his dreams of literary derring-do, and Merleau-Ponty had his happiness at being unconditionally loved, and Beauvoir had her books and sweet-shop windows, Camus grew up into a world of silence and…

On freedom of speech an freedom of thought

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

— Søren Kierkegaard

On journalists and politicians

The role of journalists is to ridicule, humiliate and generally torment politicians, pour scorn on everything they propose to do and laugh at them when they do it. We should never, never, never suggest new ways for them to spend money, or taxes they could increase, or new…