His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government...I don't know if it can please both its sponsors and its intended audience.

More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth.

Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly?

Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old.

If in the well and truly made martini DeVoto finds "water of life" and the blessing to the spirit, so also DeVoto's The Hour brings to its readers the breath of life and a vision of themselves made generous, indomitable and wise.

Label celebrity a consumer society's most precious consumer product, and eventually it becomes the hero with a thousand faces, the packaging of the society's art and politics, the framework of its commerce, and the stuff of its religion.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.