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.

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

I Must warn you, Iris, that I'm not a believer. And though I'm sure that the revelations of other men must be a source of infinite satisfaction to them, individually, I shouldn't for one second be so presumptuous as to make a choice among the many thousands of recorded revelations of truth, accepting one at the expense of all the others: I might so easily choose wrong and get into eternal trouble. And you must admit that the selection is wide, and dangerous to the amateur.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country.

The family in the West is finished... its origin was economic, not biological... the odd group of strangers that make up every family no longer have any reason to live together, to suffer from one another's jagged edges.