“The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.”

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.

What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it’s so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I’ve received a spam text.

No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.

All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.

I’m too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom’s earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.

Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.

Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

I read good. I was an English major.

Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.

You’re stupid,’ is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

Regulation creates a moral hazard.

Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.

Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.

Over and above communication and vigilance, there are two factors I have always mentioned. They are sleep, and a sense of history.

The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace – it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world.

So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity.

Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.