Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.

There are few talents so richly rewarded - especially in politics and the media - as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.

If a word means everything, then in means nothing.

France has never gotten over the fact that it was once a great power and is now just a great nuisance.

When I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day: "What is your policy toward foreign students?" My reply was: "To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards." The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.

By the end of the 20th century, "liberals" had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves "progressives" to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy.