All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have.

They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans.

[The World Trade Center and the Pentagon] have drawn, like gathered lightning, the anger of the enemies of civilization. Those enemies are always out there.... Americans are slow to anger but mighty when angry, and their proper anger now should be alloyed with pride. They are targets because of their virtues-principally democracy, and loyalty to those nations which, like Israel, are embattled salients of our virtues in a still-dangerous world.

Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic-in a word, moral-undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage.

The future is usually just like the past- right up to the moment when it isn't.

Part of the beauty and much of the moral seriousness of sport derives from the severe justice of strenuous play in a circumscribed universe of rules that protect the integrity of competition. Records are worth recording, and worth striving to surpass, because they serve as benchmarks of excellence achieved under the pressure of competition.