People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.

One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.

A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.

Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.

If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.