To permit this gross new revelation to fade, or be forgiven, would be to devalue our most essential standard of what constitutes the unpardonable. And for what? For the reputation of a man who turns out to be not even a Holocaust denier but a Holocaust affirmer. There has to be a moral limit, and either this has to be it or we must cease pretending to ourselves that we observe one.

Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

A high moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

[Orwell’s] very ordinariness is the sterling guarantee that we need no saintly representative consciences. We would do better to make sterner use of our own.

Don’t swallow your moral code in tablet form.