People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned - it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned - and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.

Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor.

The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average.

Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time - more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.

The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action.

The reason welfare is bad is not because it costs too much, nor because it "undermines the work ethic," but because it is intrinsically at odds with the way human beings come to live satisfying lives.

People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned - it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned - and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.