Mike

“Call yourself a doctor, too, do you?” said Mr. Haycox. “I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I earned that degree,” said Doctor Pond coolly. “My thesis was the third longest in any field in the country that year—eight hundred and ninety-six pages, double-spaced, with narrow margins.” “Real-estate salesman,” said Mr. Haycox. He looked back and forth between Paul and Doctor Pond, waiting for them to say something worth his attention. When they’d failed to rally after twenty seconds, he turned to go. “I’m doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit,” he said. “When you doctors figure out what you want, you’ll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The world is always new,” said Coro Mena, “however old its roots.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest

“Well, you know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano