The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

We want a system that will improve consistency and steadiness in the quality of government.

I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.

Of course great politicians are always liable to be wrong about something, and the more people tell them they are wrong, the more stubbornly they defend their error.

Francis Wheen takes a hugely enjoyable sweep through the tangled thickets of superstition and gullibility in which modern man likes to ramble. He takes particular delight in reminding us how easily fools are parted from their money and how many of them there are.

America slept because most Americans preferred it that way.

Why should people be expected to think about the meaning of life merely because they happen to be ill? That is just the time when there is no time to think about such things, because the body is so greedy for attention.