“I’m always an optimist!”

I’m a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia’s tap water.

TV news is not very instructive.

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.

World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic – with many a wink – in the people’s name.

There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.

There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.

Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.

The Pentagon talks about our power to ‘overkill’ Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.

Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.

The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

I never said I was gay, because I don’t think anyone is.

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use.

I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.

Optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.

Well, you know, I’m the forever optimist.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.