Windsor Mann Quotes

. . . If you really care about a serious cause or a deep subject, you may have to be prepared to be boring about it.” [Letters to a Young Contrarian (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 122]

those who call for ‘English Only’ believe themselves to be speaking English when they are mounting a mediocre patois,

The contrarian dogma is simple and easy to understand: “Whatever is popular is wrong,” as Oscar Wilde proclaimed at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

The test of a well-conducted argument is not its ability to convert or to persuade. It lies in its capacity to refine or to redefine the positions of the other side.

Every advance in human civilization, from the spread of science and literacy to the abolition of slavery, has had to meet the objection that it violated God-given laws.

The measure of an education,” you write elsewhere, “is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance.” And that’s all that “agnosticism” really means: it is an acknowledgment of ignorance.

Some people say it’s a sign of intelligence to be able to keep two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, and it can be a sign of intelligence. It can also be a sign of stupidity, or of unwillingness to make up the mind.

... To be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow citizens at the mercy of ideology.” [Introduction to For the Sake of Argument (New York: Verso, 1993),

can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”—has

Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

One may choose to be altruistic, whatever that may mean, but by definition one may not be compelled into altruism.

No serious person is without contradictions. The test lies in the willingness or ability to recognize and confront them.

without Thomas Jefferson as president, it is in the highest degree improbable that the United States would exist as we know it today, or even as we knew it a century ago.

... What kind of designer or creator only chooses to ‘reveal’ himself to semistupefied peasants in desert regions?” [Introduction to The Portable Atheist (New York: Da Capo Press, 2007), xviii]

. One of the most idiotic jeers against animal lovers is the one about their preferring critters to people. As a matter of observation, it will be found that people who ‘care’—about rain forests or animals, miscarriages of justice or dictatorships— are, though frequently irritating, very often the same people. Whereas those who love hamburgers and riskless hunting and mink coats are not in the front ranks of Amnesty International.

Our own fate is closely bound up with that of other species, and the loss of them would mean more than the loss of our pleasure in their company. Knowledge, science, medicine, and nutrition are all enhanced for humans by other creatures.” [“Minority Report,” Nation, 2/02/85]  

Simply put, he is a writer who can talk and a speaker who can write. Indeed, he often emphasizes the connection between the two, insisting that good writing is impossible without good speaking.1 He has based his career on this essential premise, to wit, that language must be mastered before it can be effectively deployed. Irving

He’s unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.

Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus.

The contrarian dogma is simple and easy to understand: “Whatever is popular is wrong,” as Oscar Wilde proclaimed at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. As a conclusion, this statement is questionable. As a mindset, it’s not bad.

What the above examples reveal is not a man prone to the faux pas, but a gentleman—strictly defined, by Hitchens, as “someone who is never rude except on purpose.” A spectacular instance of his gentlemanliness occurred during an appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Unlike most guests, Hitchens did not try to flatter or pacify the audience. Instead, after being booed and jeered for pointing out the horrors of a nuclear Iran, he raised his middle finger and pointed it at them, while intoning, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” What this little episode demonstrated was not only his indifference to crowd opinion—impressive in itself—but also his binary nature: He has a large mind and a big mouth—neither of which ever seems to be closed. Whereas

But what will you put in its place?’ A familiar question to any socialist, and on the face of it a formidable poser as well. It is extremely hard in the first instance to think of replacements for unemployment, racialism, war, poverty, exploitation, and oligarchy. But we’ll probably think of something.” [“Last Swing of the Crane,” New Statesman, 10/06/72]

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.” [Letters to a Young Contrarian (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 140]

In the Trump administration, the only way to keep a job is by not doing your job.

Relax, the guy who twice asked Bill Gates what the difference was between HIV and HPV is in charge.

Trump’s plan is to do nothing boldly.

Trump tells us everything about anything about which he knows nothing.