Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it.

Everything interested him and everything excited him.

William McKinley was a man made to be managed.

What other country has had the privilege of making the world's heart beat faster?

Diplomacy's primary law: LEAVE ROOM FOR NEGOTIATION.

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman.

The author says one patrician English leader saw his relationship with the populace thusly: He wasn't responsible TO them. He was responsible FOR them. He was responsible for their care.

A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done.

Duty was not untinged by ambition.

Britain had an air of careless supremacy which GALLED her neighbors.

Even his own speeches bored him.

Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist.

One of the things you learn about being married is that being with someone day in and day out can make you so comfortable that you risk losing your tact.

Gifts are temporary and often forgotten

Now, the other pillar of Israeli power - Western support and complicity - is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over.

And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it.

Frankly, we should publicly increase them [ anti-Russian sanctions ].

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

To be accurate, write; to remember, write; to know thine own mind, write. And a written prayer is a prayer of faith, special, sure, and to be answered.

Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera.

Storytelling is the art of unfolding knowledge in a way that makes each piece contribute to a larger truth.