I hate churches, all of them. But they used to know something about the importance of silence.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.

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

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.

One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.

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.