The only reason the president insists on raising [tax] rates is because he knows it will destroy Republican unity, it will cause a complete fracture of the Republican majority in the house, it will hand him a Congress that he can then manipulate for the next two years at least because the Republicans will be neutered. ... This is entirely a political action, a way to get a surrender from the Republicans.

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

I don't mind going into a liberal lion's den. That's where you test yourself.

I would say I see myself as a psychiatrist in remission.

Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it.

Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.

A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.