Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH.

Loyalty consists of many things, including being truthful with our friends. When you really disagree, you have to say so.

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. ---in Good Housekeeping

Our patriotic fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries. Other nations had evolved one way or another, evolved from tribes from a gathering of clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born, and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom.

What I got was not so much gifts and whishes come trues but a feeling of peace. I got peace itself, actually. And when you have peace, you can be strong; and when you are strong, you can get through what you have to get through, and not with exhaustion and frown marks and slumped shoulders but with relative happiness, and humor, and sometimes even gaiety.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.