If I See A Door Ajar, I

The Richness And Variety, And Indeed The Advance, Of Our Culture Depend Upon The Continuation Of This Conflict [between Conservatives And Radicals], Which Is Deeply Rooted In Human Nature.

If Anti-semitism Is A Variety Of Racism, It Is A Most Peculiar Variety, With Many Unique Characteristics. In My View As A Historian, It Is So Peculiar That It Deserves To Be Placed In A Quite Different Category. I Would Call It An Intellectual Disease, A Disease Of The Mind, Extremely Infectious And Massively Destructive.

His (lenin's)humanitarianism Was A Very Abstract Passion. It Embraced Humanity In General But He Seems To Have Had Little Love For, Or Even Interest In, Humanity In Particular. He Saw The People With Whom He Dealt, His Comrades, Not As Individuals But As Receptacles For His Ideas. On That Basis, And No Other, They Were Judged. He Judged Man Not By Their Moral Qualities But By Their Views, Or Rather The Degree To Which They Accepted His.

For Me This Is The Vital Litmus Test: No Intellectual Society Can Flourish Where A Jew Feels Even Slightly Uneasy.

The Writer Learns To Write, In The Last Resort, Only By Writing. He Must Get Words Onto Paper Even If He Is Dissatisfied With Them. A Young Writer Must Cross Many Psychological Barriers To Acquire Confidence In His Capacity To Produce Good Work-especially His First Full-length Book-and He Cannot Do This By Staring At A Piece Of Blank Paper, Searching For The Perfect Sentence.