People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.

If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.

A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.

I do the best with what exists.

Genius is a rising stock market.