“They’re counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They’re counting on you to be standing at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket!”

As a student I learned from wonderful teachers and ever since then I’ve thought everyone is a teacher.

Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions – the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who’d rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.

Unless you’re willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of bias, there’s no use even trying.

Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it’s marinated in humor.

Television is a medium. It is neither rare nor well done.

Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.

For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House – as Brutus loved Caesar.

Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.

I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one

I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.

Yet 91 percent think it’s “not likely” that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done.

The most encouraging sign is that 71 percent of the public believe the system is profoundly corrupted by the power of money. Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s “important” that we reduce the influence of money.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

A human being is only interesting if he’s in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces.

I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don’t like it, you can paint over it!

Young people who are just starting out somehow need to let you know they know how to sing.

Show me a dog who still cannot perform a task after it has been trained over and over again, and I’ll tell you who the slow learner is.

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.