A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the hightest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

I'm in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.

It is natural for men to want power. But to seek power actively takes a temperament baffling to both the simple and the wise. The simple cannot fathom how any man would dare presume to prevail, while the wise are amazed that any reasonable man would want the world, assuming he could get it.