The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you.

As long as we are on firm moral ground, as long as we're caring about other people, these are legitimate worries. The minute that we start protecting our own interests in the name of these worries and saying, "Oh, we have to make sure that only Ford Motor Company manufactures cars, because we can't be sure that the cars in other countries are being made quite up to our point of view," we're economically off base, and, of course, we're moral hypocrites, too.

I don't watch much television. Yeah, that's pretty funny. I don't know where The Daily Show stand politically, do you?

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.

When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry.

The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

When [George W.] Bush was elected, I think they thought I would have some sort of special "in" with that administration, to provide some sort of inside poop. Which is not something I'd be interested in doing, and anyway, I didn't. I actually knew more people in his dad's administration. So it was obviously winding down at Rolling Stone, and they were having financial troubles, too. They weren't getting the advertising, and the issues were getting thin. They fired Bob Love, who'd been my editor there for a long time.