When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.

Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

We have no one to blame for the Kennedys but ourselves. We took the Kennedys to heart of our own accord. And it is my opinion that we did it not because we respected them or thought what they proposed was good, but because they were pretty. We, the electorate, were smitten by this handsome, vivacious family. . . . We wanted to hug their golden tousled heads to our dumpy breasts.

East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

We are a nation that worships speed and power. And for good reason. Without power we would still be part of England and everybody would be out of work... Bicycles are too slow and impuissant for a nation like ours. They belong in Czechoslovakia.

[Kurt] Vonnegut once said, if you ever want to know who somebody is... Like you look at Richard Nixon, or Adolf Hitler, or Ralph Nader, or anybody who seems like a difficult person to understand, and is therefore not part of the pattern of human behavior. Think about who they were in high school, and they will explain themselves to you. So we got a hold of, like, 50 high-school yearbooks, including my mom's from 1925 or something, and we discovered that they're all the same.

The old woman was not only ugly with the ugliness age brings us all but showed signs of formidable ugliness by birth - pickle-jar chin, mainsail ears and a nose like a trigonometry problem. What's more, she had the deep frown and snit wrinkles that come from a lifetime of bad character.