They’re called ‘facts’, and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don’t care at all what you think of my motives.

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group’s normative power to shape the opinions of the...

One of the juiciest pleasures of life is to be able to salute and embrace, as elected leaders and honored representatives, people whom you first met when they were on the run or in exile...

If you believe in your heart that you are right, then you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.

I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

When journalists are ‘accused’ of being ‘advocates’, that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I...

I am often described to my irritation as a ‘contrarian’ and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up...

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and...

Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with...

Whether for good or for bad, the Iran that ultimately rises out of the ashes of last summer’s uprising will be unlike the Iran we know today, and for that we can thank the Green...

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with...

We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent.

Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des AndersdenkendenFreedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have...

It wakes us right up.

Let your dissent fuel you, your anger inspire you, your rage convey you, and your fury strike a chilling fear onto the spines of your enemies.

Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state...

Any government’s condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what’s happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance...

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the...

Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become ‘one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention’: a rebel. …And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now...