“Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don’t personally believe that.”

My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer’s mind-set: Everything’s kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?

It’s a considerable source of tragedy in the world that people stay in powerful jobs long past the point where they’re a spent force.

Every technology, including the printing press, comes at some price.

The curse of a journalist is that he always has more questions than answers.

Casual reliance on unnamed sources…corrodes our credibility and, in cases that are rare but not rare enough, may abet journalistic malpractice.

The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your website and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.

I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.

I make a joke that I’m the Internet curmudgeon, but ‘wary’ is a good way to put it.

Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

I may be the old-media id, but I think I may be entitled to some credit for being a new-media pioneer.

A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Satan.

Twitter and Facebook are brilliant- tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible.

Liberation movements – operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially – thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.

I don’t have dating tips.

In politics there are no principles, just opportunities

The world has to change to fit you. And if you stick to your principles, values and morals long enough, it will.

If you want spiritual life you have to pay the price. The price is the four regulative principles.

Principles have a way of yielding to power.

There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.

I’m different in the sense that every minute of every day, I change. I’m thinking. But the basic principles that have powered me forward are still there. They’re not different.

An ill principle in the mind is worse than the matter of a disease in the body.

If I’ve learned any one lesson from life, it’s this: If you don’t stand for something, you will stand for anything.