The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.

I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.

Anti-utopianism continues to suffuse our culture...Today few imagine that society can be fundamentally improved, and those who do are seen as at best deluded, at worst threatening.

Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

How long does one have to live before one can no longer be fooled by words?

What's wisdom if not the will to learn the lessons, which Nature puts in one's way at every step?

They always use the word 'insult' with me, but I don't hurt anybody. I wouldn't be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.

Don't be offended by your lack of purity. Purity is a seed that will grow and develop.

One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards.

I get absolutely ruthless in my own way about not doing anything else when I am trying to concentrate on writing a book. I have to stick to it and concentrate.

I'm a country girl. I like country music. I'm not going to lie. I'm from the South, and I grew up on it. My dad was a country singer-songwriter, so it's in my blood and I love it.

No disaster is worse than being discontented.

Glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.