The pity of all this is, you know, a man like that [ Sri Ramakrishna ] has to have disciples, or no one would ever hear about him. But somehow, as the generations pass, the flame dies out. And eventually the disciples kill him. I wish that there was a way of putting a time-bomb into scriptures and records- not a time-bomb, but some kind of invisible ink, so that all scriptures would un-print themselves about fifty years after the master's death. And just dissolve.

But what we've got going wrong is we've got a kind of bifurcation [in cultural development]: You take your classified telephone directory, and open up 'Churche…

Nowadays, of course, progressive theologians are all for sex; they say it's a good thing, the biblical position was not that sex was evil, but that it was good…

Nothing fails like success.

People don't forget, do they?

After my death I wish no other herald, no other speaker of my living actions, to keep my honour from corruption, but such an honest chronicler as Froude.

It's unfortunate that [ Nirvana ] ended [with Kurt Cobain's suicide], because ultimately it just leaves everyone with this question mark, you know, everybody i…