For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.

Always a godfather, never a god.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

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.

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.