These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland.

No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.

Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject to general maximum price regulation wanted an exception and went to Congress to persuade a Congressman, or a group of people on the Hill, that I was being a menace to their industry.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

I do the best with what exists.

Foreign policy is conducted for the convenience and enjoyment of people in Washington.