You know, larger than life is always better than smaller than life in politicians. And, you know, God save us from mediocrities.

Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased.

The two-war strategy was a product of the cold war, when we had to have the ability to fight the Russians on the plains of Europe and fight the Chinese on the Korean peninsula at the same time. That costs an awful lot of money.

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

Dictating to dictators doesn't work; they are congenitally delusional about their own indispensability.

For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.