You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.

Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.

Good manners consist of doing precisely what everyone thinks should be done, especially when no one knows quite what that is.

Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, "You're a disgusting, drunken mess." And that's a good description of a party, if it's done right.

The Harvard Lampoon itself, which had a pretty stellar run in the '60s.

You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.

Whenever government proposes to get involved in the regulation of trade, just be very, very careful about who's behind this proposal, what their motives are.