The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.