Something that comes to us, some gym shoe that comes to us as a result of child labor from a brutal dictatorship, where people do not have basic freedoms, it wouldn't bug me to tax the living Dickens out of that thing or even to forbid its importation whatsoever. But that's a moral question, not an economic question.

Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

There is that kind of happiness. There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.

In the wake of Animal House, the stock briefly and quite wrongly shot up. So I love that movie.

Everybody in 15th century Spain was wrong about where China was and as a result, Columbus discovered Caribbean vacations.

The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.