“When I came back to Washington to be The Times’ chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons.”

There’s a Washington standard of casually putting things off the record. It’s really gone too far. I don’t know an easy way to turn it back.

I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I’m used to doing.

Ted Kennedy’s achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.

Gore speaks to America as if English is its second language; George W. speaks as if English is his second language.

Another thing that’s quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you’ve written the next morning and you think you didn’t get it quite right, you can fix it.

One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account.

The chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don’t, Nature at once tells you you are wrong.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

ISIS and Iran have declared war on America, and we need a commander in chief who will do everything necessary to keep our children safe.

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I aim to be the disrupter in chief.

When you’re the commander in chief, you’re the commander in chief on day one. You don’t get like a six-month grace period.