Pessimism is as American as apple pie. Frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.

Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction.

The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples.

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.

The phrase "domestic cat" is an oxymoron.