The free society does not guarantee virtue, any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed, it has to be won through personal striving.

Whenever the government is involved, there is an element of coercion.

The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong—it is obscene.

Liberty is the essential precondition for achieving virtue... In order to exercise virtue, we need to have the ability to choose freely.

I do think American culture has shifted a little bit away from the contemplative more toward the visual, more toward the emotional, and more toward the expressive. I don't think there's a lot that can be done about that. We just have to understand that it's the product of technology and of the way people live now.

I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat.

I'm an immigrant to the U.S., and I've constantly been thinking about America both from the inside and from the outside. And I've come to believe that we're living at a critical time when the American Dream is in jeopardy and this American Era which began after World War II might be winding down.