You don’t have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: ‘that world is gone.’
I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.
We are all afraid. That’s the thing that unites all truly successful people: fear, fear of failing, fear of criticism, fear of letting down the team in some way. That why they try so hard, that’s why they pay attention to detail and try to get every possible duck in a row. It’s fear.
My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.
Part of courage is simple consistency.
The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.
You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn’t real to you anymore.
If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don’t go along to get along; do your best and when you have to – and you will – leave, and be something else.
The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.
Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.
Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It’s unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don’t have to try. – in Good Housekeeping.
What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?
The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.
If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.
Most people aren’t appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn’t take the drug money...
Don’t fall in love with politicians, they’re all a disappointment. They can’t help it, they just are.
By trying to do too much, you risk not doing enough.