An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.

We often talk too much & listen too little. The surer route to winning a friend isn't to convince them that you're right, but that you care what they think.

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

[T]o argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt.

A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

Liberty is precious. But so is life. It should not be so difficult for men and women of good will and good heart and sound mind to find the right balance between the two.

In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

To have no desire is such a load of bullshit--forgive me for being so blunt. To have no passion in one's life is a cop-out for cowards.

Thoughts not only manifest into reality, they define it.

But he who knows what insanity is, is sane; whereas insanity can no more be sensible of its own existence, than blindness can see itself.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

You can poke fun at some pretty difficult circumstances, and it's just a way to pop the bubble. I don't do that thing onstage usually, but offstage sometimes I might.

Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy and relationships. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species.

There are only two questions about government. How much do you want? How much can you stand?

History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.

It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival.