If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.

One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world - and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East - is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn't there. It has to do with history.

Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.

A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now. You've probably never woken up early on a winter morning to the acid stink of coal smoke in the air, which was everywhere when I was a little kid. My grade school was heated with coal. Not only was coal used to generate electricity, it was without any scrubbers in the stacks.