It was a new kind of class war - the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.

The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.

A conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.

If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.

Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.

The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods

Knowledge is a better weapon than a sword.

The inside of the old Camaro smelled like asphalt and desire, gasoline and dreams.

Well, I did tell you I couldn’t give you a thing. Maybe you’ve just realised that Alistair can give the god damn world, and the pleasure of kissing his shiny slap-head every day!

Nine times out of 10, criticism is a defense mechanism. We criticize in others what we don't like in ourselves.

I'm fascinated by people's process. Everyone's process is a little bit different, and just to see the different paths that people take to get where they are is really interesting to me.

You might be able to thrash your way out of a spiderweb, but thrashing in quicksand doesn’t work. The harder you fight, the more ground you lose. Struggling merely expedites your inevitable defeat.

People have forgotten how to tell a story.

Friendship is necessary to our well-being—not just nice but necessary. We all hunger for it; it’s a universal need.

I just think people are so used to seeing me on shows like Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars, which are more geared toward teens. But in reality, I could have a 12-year-old kid.

I was never the one that really wanted to be a solo artist, I was always in groups.