Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse.

There is no pure free-market economy.

A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.

Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Truth, which is important to a scholar, has to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.

History is a better guide than good intentions.

What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.

Power ... is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end.

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

I wear clothes that most people in the Midwest would probably deem inappropriate at my age. And I rock a bikini all summer long. I know that it's not normal, but I just don't care. I live once.

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.

It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in matters of love.

How do you prevent a little sociopath from becoming a big, full-blown sociopath? Sit on him.

Talent is often a defect in character.

[I've] learned how to pull the mic away and attack the poetry with my body.

The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.