“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.”

You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.

We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being ‘hegemonistic’, of engaging in ‘unilateralism’, of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts. We are.

Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.

People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let’s hope so.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.

You can’t destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America’s elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite, and about half the time, you’re doing us a favor.

I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.

Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.

The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the ’70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.

When I came back to Washington to be The Times’ chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons.

Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power

The utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God’s creation.

The seeking of the kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life.

Our identification with the mind and body is the chief reason for our failure to know our self as we truly are.

Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and respect of self, in turn, is the chief element in courage.

I don’t know the man I admire more than [Charles Evans] Hughes. If ever I have the chance I shall offer him the Chief Justiceship.

Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.