Quotes About Controversy

TSA is such low-hanging fruit. I mean, anybody can bash the TSA.

The silliest, most frustrating national dialogue has been this chattering about waterboarding and slapping around bad guys in order to extract information from them.

Religious fundamentalists in Bangladesh have always argued for a ban on my books.

I do not think that abortion services should be part of our foreign aid funding in any way.

My first memories are of picketing ex-servicemen's funerals and telling their families they were going to burn in hell.

Feminists will not be satisfied until every abortion is performed by a gay black doctor under an endangered tree on a reservation for handicapped Indians.

He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!

Though I believe you're a good lad. But you're the sort of fellow to set a whole division by the ears… A regular… what's 'is name? A regular Dreyfus!" "Did you think Dreyfus was guilty?" Tietjens asked. "Hang it," the General said, "he was worse than guilty—the sort of fellow you couldn't believe in and yet couldn't prove anything against. The curse of the world...

and his peers are not many. You may like him or not, may attack him or sing his praises, but you cannot ignore him. He is of those that die hard. Be as fastidious as you will; make up your mind to recognize only those who are, without any manner of doubt, beyond and above all others; however few the names you keep, Rabelais' will always remain.

If you ever say anything good about Oliver Cromwell they'll all hit you.

There's something weird and sexual about the way some people talk about God--have you noticed?

Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.

Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion?

What I seek is simply a public discussion of a public disgrace.

Sometimes, when I open my mouth, all hell breaks loose. Other times, I feel like a voice in the wilderness and I wonder, 'Does anybody get this?'

I look at ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge) as a poison pill in the energy bill.

I've been making pieces dealing with environmental issues at least since 2004; I mean, I did stuff for the Sierra Club and the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge even back in the 1990s. But somewhere a little after 2004, Hummer hits me up. I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?'

Each day I wake up and check the news. Nearly every day it's merely to make sure I did not miss anything wildly controversial. Who said what, what are the implications of that comment, what was the context of what was said? Some days are slow, which is great. We can focus on a particular policy issue or piece of legislation.

History will decide if I'm a villain or a hero.

I always will be the villain, no matter what. I don't know why.

The argument that gay marriage doesn't affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.

You can't really win as a Booker judge. If you choose the obvious names, the unit-shifters, you're accused of being timid and unimaginative; if you choose the unfamous, you're labelled willful and perverse.

For decades, conservatives have struggled with containing crackpottery, most notably William F. Buckley's famous excommunication of the John Birch Society in the 1960s.

The media love coarse debate because coarse debate drives ratings and ratings generate profits. Unless the TV producer happens to be William Shakespeare, an argument is more interesting than a soliloquy - and there will never be a shortage of people willing to argue on TV.