The definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.

So the danger of conservative judicial activism has been averted for another year. Stay tuned.

Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism.

The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is for conservatives what the equal protection clause of the 14th is for liberals.

Many 'hard' scientists regard the term 'social science' as an oxymoron. Science means hypotheses you can test, and prove or disprove. Social science is little more than observation putting on airs.

In those days, the late 1970s, one of the leading politicians was a soon-to-be uncle by marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger, named Ted Kennedy.

He's nice enough not to want to be associated with a nasty remark but not nice enough not to make it. Lacking the courage of one's nastiness does not make one nice.

Americans don't want leadership. They want alchemy.

Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy.

If sexual intercourse, as the poets tell us, began in 1963, it was another decade and a half before the American political system began to take notice.

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

If a manager of mine ever said someone was indispensable, I'd fire him.

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

There are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.

True preaching is the sweating of blood.

That which never has been, never is, and never will be.

Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

One should always aim at being interesting, rather than exact.

I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Genius is Omniscience flowing into man.