If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn.

As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.

When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.

War cannot be used as a means to prevent or abolish wars. ... The idea of a war to prevent war is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks.

James Bond in his Sean Connery days ... was the first well-known bachelor on the American scene who was not a drifter or a degenerate and did not eat out of cans.

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing - the truly democratic thing about it - is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that's when you get into selling the house.