... what's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn't an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give it.

Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws.

It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.

Public scandals are America's favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings.

God should always be in the first place in our lives

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

I don't think my moped could outrun a cheetah.

Science Fiction will never run out of things to wonder about until the human race ceases to use its brain.

In athletics there's always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you're not cheating. I think that's just a quirk of human nature.

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.

An example is often a deceptive mirror, and the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts, is not always found written in things past

We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.

If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.

Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.