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

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.

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

The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.

The only things flawless about me are my flaws.

I get confused with all the rules in golf. Let's say you're playing in L.A. and your ball lands on a dead body. Is your relief one or two club lengths?

There are only two excuses you can use for missing rugby training - death and docking!

Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.

In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms

My life owes me. Like an overdose, I'm slowly Drifting into the arms of trouble, then trouble holds me

You can’t know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that.

Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.

I know people think that acting is not quite the occupation of grown-ups, but it is actually the ultimate learning process: You get a multitude of experiences, all for the price of one life.

I'm not a very intentional writer. I try to be as unintentional as possible. What I basically try to do is invite the zeitgeist in to tea.