“Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom and hall.”

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.

The people who despise America are the editors of the ‘New Statesman.’ Their green-card applications must have been turned down.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.

Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters.

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people – except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English.

Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn’t matter.

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there’s a reason for that – the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent – No Child Left Behind.

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.

The world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats.

New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State’s registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they’re going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can’t understand what they say.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.

Physical pain is a fact that comes with living, just as illness or financial woes or broken relationships are facts. But misery is a state of mind, a reaction to the facts, that can be controlled or altered by an act of will.

The worst part is staying in the room after you’ve broken the news, so that you’re forced to be there when someone’s life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn’t bother them – such people are not to be trusted.

A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?

How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?

If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth.

For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation.

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.