I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
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"Barney Collier's Book," Esquire (January 1976); republished in Scribble, Scribble (1978), ch. 10Nora Ephron
I knew I was telling a story that would be gripping enough to take readers with it, and I have a high enough opinion of my readers to expect them to take a little difficulty in their stride. My readers are intelligent: I don't write for stupid people. Now mark this carefully, because otherwise I shall be misquoted and vilified again — we are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads. Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually adventurous.
Philip Pullman
During the last months of the German Occupation in 1944, the young man who was to become France’s most controversial contemporary philosopher and the woman who was to become its most controversial feminist met the professional criminal who was to become its most controversial playwright.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Crocker's Rules didn't give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, "Crocker's Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people."
Eliezer Yudkowsky
...the basic principles of the military services are unchangeable. Courage and candor, obedience and comradeship, love of fatherland and loyalty to the State: these are ever the distinguishing characteristics of the soldier and sailor. Building character through intelligent training and education is always the first and greatest goal.
Erich Raeder
He was quite a thinker ... I think if his life had been different, if he'd zigged instead of zagged, I could see him growing up to become a college professor — at a Christian college, probably, though the administration would no doubt have bitten their nails to the quick more than once over some of his ways. I have several letters from him where he expounded on the oddities of life. The joys and the quirks. He might have been a sociologist, even. People fascinated him. Life fascinated him, since he had squandered his chances of living a normal one. But he made the most of it, more so than anyone I've ever met.
Sean Sellers
Ephron, Nora
Epictetus
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