Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.

Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.

Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.

It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.

I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.

I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.

Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.