“I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.”

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.

Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.

One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

The only people I truly envy are those who can play a musical instrument and those who can eat anything they want without gaining weight.

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.

Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

People who pride themselves on their “complexity” and deride others for being “simplistic” should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.

The really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.

No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.

What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.

If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer.

Superhuman effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.

I’m proud of everything I achieved with ‘Idol,’ and away from ‘Idol’ also. It’s just such a different show now to what it was when I was on it. I didn’t even know it was a TV show until the third audition.

I never wanted to take autographs, always wanted to give them. To do this, you have to achieve something.

All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing and not moving toward excellence.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.

The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we’ve already achieved them.