Sometimes, saying what others are afraid or unwilling to say is just being an asshole. We are all free to be assholes, but we are not free to do so without consequence.

Everybody alive knows, deep down, that they're an asshole. And they are. I defy you to name anyone who ever lived who wasn't an asshole. Being one comes with having one. But nearly everybody is such an asshole, they think assholes are a minority. They think they're one of a mere handful of them — so they work like crazy to keep anyone from finding out their secret shame: that they're one of the assholes. I came to terms with being an asshole twenty or thirty years ago. Since then I've been working on being a pleasant one.

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?”

If, of course, your action is wrong, just don’t do it at all, but if it’s right, why be afraid of people whose criticism is off the mark?

I don't fear being outspoken. The only thing I fear is losing my sense of integrity or losing sight of the values on which I guide my life. So I don't think it's particularly brave or unusual for me to speak out.

That is just my dissenting opinion, which I don’t conceive of as an “attack”. I find differences of opinion quite normal, the very stuff of intellectual life, and those who can only see them as attacks are not intellectuals.

Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you’re honest with them. Then you’re an asshole

In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.

Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important. You need to once in a while go ‘Uh, I’m kind of an asshole.

"I'm not worried," I said. And I wasn't, because I thought things would be fine. And even though I was wrong, it is still not so bad a way to set your mind toward the unknown just when you are coming into the face of it.

Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target. You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.

I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.

I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, "You're wrong" I say, "What can you expect of an ass?"

So I certainly don’t regard myself as brave. I just see myself—if I want to indulge a little immodesty—as rather more honest and outspoken than some other people I know.