[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

You're a stalker with hooves.""I am not! I followed her to the Big House and hid in a bush and watched the whole thing.

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something... History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.

I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair, but I've learned the devil a lot in the last five minutes.

From the business point of view—not to overstate it—intellectual property is dead; long live intellectual process. Long live service; long live performance.

Coaches are basically schizophrenic. We are pessimistic to the press and among fellow coaches, but to our team, we are the eternal optimists.

I have a commission to do a piece in a place in California, Oliver Ranch, which has an eight-storey structure called The Tower designed by the visual artist Ann Hamilton.

Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.

People moved in across the street and are immediately cutting down a huge tree. Their toothbrushes will know my buttonhole.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.