If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create an agency the size of NASA to build one.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

Life is never more fun than when you're the underdog competing against the giants.

When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can't find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose.

If we really want to know who is responsible for the mess we're in, all we have to do is look in the mirror. You and I own this country, and we are responsible for what happens to it.

In business, people are held accountable. In Washington, nobody is held accountable. In business, people are judged on results. In Washington, people are measured by their ability to get reelected.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success.

The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she's there, but nobody wants to talk about her.

So many people spend their lives chasing money and end up as the richest men in the cemetery. I don't want to be like that.

War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

Whenever the wife wants to do drugs, she thinks about Sartre. One bad trip and then a giant lobster followed him around for the rest of his days.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

My mother taught me to treat a lady respectfully.

And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.

The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.

scapegoat, n. I think our top two are: 1. Not enough coffee. 2. Too much coffee.

Enjoy yourself -it's later than you think.

Nature, the handmaid of God Almighty, does nothing but with good advice, if we make research into the true reason of things.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.