Quote For The Day

"The policeman isn't frightened by dissidents. Why should he be? Policemen love dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics. Heretics give meaning to the defenders of the faith. Nobody cares more than a heretic. … It means they're playing on the same board. So [Gustav] Husak [the Communist Czech president] can relax; he's made the rules, it's his game. The population plays the other way, by agreeing to be bribed by places at university or an easy ride at work. They care enough to keep their thoughts to themselves; their haircuts give nothing away. But the Plastics don't care at all. They're unbribable. They're coming from somewhere else, from where the Muses come from. They're not heretics. They're pagans," - "Jan" in Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'N Roll", as cited by Fred Kaplan in an engaging piece in Slate.

The relationship between freedom and the unbribability of pagans is not so well understood by today's Christianists.