When self-important people and powerful institutions are governed by illusion, history has a way of biting back.

Leaks and whispers are a daily routine of news-gathering in Washington.

A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?

The regime of globalization promotes an unfettered marketplace as the dynamic instrument organizing international relations.

Folks in the bottom half of the economy are already squeezed hard. They will be bloodied and bankrupt if economic policy inadvertently induces a recession.

Money is power in American politics. It always has been.

The threat to globalization is not the wasted American dollars but Washington's readiness to mix US commercial interests with its self-appointed role as global protector.

In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims.

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

People know elections, like television commercials, are not real.

Obviously, people with low or even moderate incomes could not afford such savings rates, and even diligent savings from their low wages would not be enough to pay for either retirement or healthcare.

In dreams begin responsibilities

The day you find out who you are is when you look back and realize that it was never the words, rather your actions that defined you.

Fame is neither something to value nor to view as a threat.

I'm a small-town guy, and moving to a huge city might be an adjustment.

I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think about today..." "No, that's giving up... I'm still hpoing that yesterday will get better.

The key to human happiness lies within our own state of mind, and so too do the primary obstacles to that happiness.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders.

Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.