The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class.

Most presidents come to Washington bright as freshly minted dimes and leave much diminished.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.