Paradoxically, the problems of politics often arise not in the form of a problem of scarcity, but as one of abundance.

Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.

Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.

We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.

If anyone is tweeting right now, I'm not pulling a knife on David Cronenberg!

I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?

Dreams are evidence that we are creatures who produce more meaning than we can ourselves understand.

We are capitalism made flesh.

We don't know what the future will bring, but that's because we are ever in the process of creating it, not because it is an alien force to which we have to submit.

Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.

If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily.

Oh, there's tons of resentment. That's normal. I can't control that, and I don't worry about it.

A speech is entertaining only when serenely detached from all information.

If you talk to any pitcher, consistency is the most important thing.

When I was growing up, you sort of did the unthinkable. You did something that has never really been replicated.

Enthusiasm is ever a gracious, pardonable thing, because in its essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose roots strike not in the base earth.

No longer a stranger, you listen all day to these crazy love-words. Like a bee you fill hundreds of homes with honey, though yours is a long flight from here.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.