Born on April 23 — Quotes

The concept of “human existence” suggests an abstract human condition; “class existence” indicts bad conditions. The former suggests a nonexistent egalitarianism, as if master and slave, owner and worker, bomber and bombed all participate in the same universal abstraction. … The human condition for the rich is the inhuman one for the impoverished.

Guns don't kill people – Americans kill people.

Project 2025 is born from an impulse as old as America. It’s an impulse that says "one class of Americans is entitled to lead, and the rest of us are lucky to be allowed to serve". That thinks there should be a limited government when it comes to rules they have to live by, but also a unitary executive to keep the rest of us in line. These are old, old ideas that have been shouted from podiums by the likes of George Wallace and Pat Buchanan but have now been placed into a new handbook for an only-too-willing president to use on day one. And in a perfect world, I would love if we had an opposing party better able to articulate a strong defense of our country’s ideals and that also consistently lived up to them. People are entitled to hope for more from the next four years than someone just not being Trump and for at least two Supreme Court justices to die. I’m not saying which ones I would prefer, but I think we all have our top two. And for anyone tempted to think, "Well, we survived Trump’s first term," first, not everyone did. And it should hopefully be very clear by now: a second Trump term really does promise to be far, far worse. Because if Trump’s first term was defined by chaos, his second could be defined by ruthless efficiency, and that should be troubling to absolutely everyone, because Project 2025 is a movement whose members joke about wanting a white homeland and insist women have to have more babies to uphold Western society. And its work could be about to be funneled through a man who happily calls his fellow Americans “vermin.” It is not subtle, it’s hard to miss, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Should I start mocking claims of flying horses or the flat-earth theory as mentioned in your Quran? You are marrying a six year-old girl and having sex with her when she turned nine. Who did it? Prophet Muhammad. Should I start saying all these things that are mentioned in your scriptures?

"That means making sure your diet is good, making sure that you're getting enough protein, that you're getting enough zinc, that you're getting enough folic acid, all of those are important for hair growth," she said, adding, "Your styling and grooming habits are incredibly important."

He's promised to be "the greatest environmental President in American history" and has talked about a bunch of things that we have covered, like so-called "forever chemicals" and PFAS and the proliferation of microplastics. You know, all the fun stuff that you expect from our "comedy" show. Which, at this point, should probably be called You Have Already Been Poisoned with the Duolingo Owl's Biological Uncle.

Over the years and against conventional wisdom, utopians sustained a vision of life beyond the market. … Georg Lukács set forth a theory of the “old and new culture” in which he argued that the socialist economy was not the goal; it was simply a precondition for humanity to advance to a new and humane culture. Most radicals do not understand that political power and economic reorganization is not the end-all, stated Lukács. The goal is not a new economic order, but freedom from an obsession with economics.

You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life.

The fact is, no matter how executions are performed, they'll never be humane. No matter how many times you call them "textbook" or claim it's "much better than anything they did to the victims", or show people viral videos of dizzy tweens on helium, it's never gonna be okay, and we are kidding ourselves if we think taking someone's life actually lowers the number of killers in the world; it literally, definitionally, creates more.

But that is the natural endpoint of austerity right there: punishing people for circumstances completely beyond their control. And Sunak is now promising to introduce what he calls the next generation of welfare reforms, including yet more cuts, justifying it by saying, “I worry very much about benefits becoming a lifestyle choice.” Which is a rich fucking statement from a rich fucking man who’d probably go into anaphylactic shock if he ever had to fly coach.

Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends; they're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there.

The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist.

I walk out here every night with "Hustle, Loyalty, Respect" on my sleeve. That is a credo I have adopted from the men and women who defend the freedom of this country. The president has just announced, that we have caught and compromised to a permanent end, Osama Bin Laden. This is something tonight. But I feel damn proud to be an American.

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

It's not like the Geneva Convention says "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies... unless there's, like, really convenient shopping and a super manageable commute to Jerusalem".