Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives.

There is no pure free-market economy.

A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.

Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Truth, which is important to a scholar, has to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.

History is a better guide than good intentions.

What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.

Power ... is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end.

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.

I love being in love. I don't think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive.

I understand what it feels like not to like aspects of yourself. There have been times that I have felt really terrible about the way I look. I have the seed of that feeling.

I used to want to be a children's writer, because I would have all these great ideas when I was little, and I'd write them and draw them, and turn them into class.

Do you know my dream? I really want to become an aluminum-siding salesman.

Few children learn to read books by themselves. Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word; Someone has to show them the way.

Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.

The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.

You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.

[D]ifferent people have different quotational gravity.