Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.

When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back.

A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.

Chess: It's like alcohol. It's a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

There's a reason why in New York Harbor we have the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Equality.

If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House.

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

Better to be paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up

Washington is the only place in the world where a gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth.

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it.

To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.

Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

Whenever we release our need to be right about everything as parents, we are able to meet our children in a relationship of mutuality and respect.

I don't even like New York rappers.

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.

To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction.

There's times you want to give up and times you want to move on ... you get so much satisfaction out of staying and sticking with it, and seeing things turn around.

Crows appear in many of my new unpublished poems. In these walks, they take on a symbolic life apart from their irritating, undeniable, interruptive presence. I figure them differently.

If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.