“I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.”

A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything. It’s not backed by gold or silver.

I’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.

When I’m in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Everybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they’re right.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.

It’s better to make fun of yourself because you’ve always got someone around to make fun of, and they can’t sue you.

I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.