What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give it.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn't an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

... what's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws.

It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.

Public scandals are America's favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings.

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us

Be aware for there is a snare ready for a serpent

Without challenges, we fail to wonder.

When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.

It's so much better to hand over a finished book than having all these people waiting.

Oh, poor me (jokingly, after being told that Randy Johnson & Pedro Martinez would make more in 2003 than he would). What do I do now? I guess I'll have to get a second job.

The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

Motley Crue, collectively and individually, have done things on our own terms.

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.