Never assume the obvious is true.

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.

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.

To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.

[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.

The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.