“A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’”

The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.

Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.

You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.

We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being ‘hegemonistic’, of engaging in ‘unilateralism’, of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts. We are.

Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.

People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let’s hope so.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.

I had only that one picture, Hitler, the Beast of Berlin, in which I had a part big enough to impress anyone.

When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for?

You think a lot of people get to be big stars and get a little crazy.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.

When I was in high school, I don’t know that I really had big dreams.

Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all.

Hee Haw was probably my biggest exposure to live music at a young age.