The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.

One ideological claim is that private property is theft, that the natural product of the existence of property is evil, and that private ownership therefore should not exist... What those who feel this way don't realize is that property is a notion that has to do with control - that property is a system for the disposal of power. The absence of property almost always means the concentration of power in the state.

The status quo is working.

We have the right to our own opinions, but not our own facts.

The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.

Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, 'Why wasn't I consulted?'