You're never really out of politics.

A liberal society cannot be defended by herbivores. We need carnivores to save us, but we had better make sure the meat-eaters hunt only on our orders.

Well, I'm an absolute fan of lacy lingerie. I want to make that perfectly clear.

There's a civic nationalism in Britain and dozens of other countries.

There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.

Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted.

An intellectual may be interested in ideas and policies for their own sake, but a politician's interest is exclusively in the question of whether an idea's time has come.

Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.

I distinguish, between nationalism and patriotism.

It's good for people to believe in causes larger than themselves.

There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want a state of their own.

If it has a name or a description it has or will exist at some point in time

I was a military spouse, and I lived on military pay. It is very difficult to do that. But we do that with honor and with gratitude for the chance to serve this country.

...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.

If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.

No pay, no Goldblum. That's it.

Perfection is impossibility but striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can. That is what counts.

Humanity always becomes a conqueror.

But who are you?" Percy—" I started to say. Then the skeletons turned around. "Gotta go!" What kind of name is Percy Gotta-go?

Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.

Praise Allah, for by praise His blessings multiply.