“Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or instrument of government – but the reverse… If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom.”

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.

The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind….

To take the measure of oneself by reference to one’s colleagues leads to envy or complacency rather than constructive self-examination.

Yale’s greatness carries an urgent need to guard against the fall of excellence into exclusivity, of refinement into preciousness, of elegance into class and convention.

Attitudes on campuses often presage tendencies in the larger society. If that is so with respect to freedom of expression, the erosion of principle we have seen throughout our society in recent years may be only the beginning.

When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth. But when Bush got elected, that was the first time I started actually reading the news.

I am a great believer in planning- economic, social, political, military, total world planning.

Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims.

That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident.

The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won’t take it, but somebody always does.

You’re not a human till you’re in my phone book. There. My hat is now in the political ring.

What is important is that a political party articulates the mood of a generation.

What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths – half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.