My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good!

I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.

I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.

Communism will win.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions.

What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth.

Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.

When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.

Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not.

Fascism is relatively easy to explain. It is a reactionary phenomenon. Nazism was some bad guys having some bad ideas and unfortunately succeeding in realizing them.

The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is Leave me alone dont harass me Im intolerant towards your over proximity.

The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is 'Leave me alone; don't harass me; I'm intolerant towards your over-proximity.

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

My mum says, 'Go with your first instinct,' but this can lead to impulse buying!

To be womanly is one thing, and one only; it is to be sensitive to man, to be highly endowed with the sex instinct; to be manly is to be sensitive to woman.

I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

The instinct to worship is hardly less strong than the instinct to eat.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

Your instinct, rather than precision stabbing, is more about just random bludgeoning.

The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.

Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend and to be true under any and all trials is the mark of a man!

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Bullies are always cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey.

It's a perfectly human instinct to want to be near water.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Yet otters have not been hunters in water long enough for the habit to become an instinct.

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.

I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience.

Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.

I had this instinct and I just knew it. It was a very strange thing and as soon as I finished recording it, we were all in the studio saying we have something really special here.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.

I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term.

All the learning in the world cannot replace instinct.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.