"The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself."

"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God."

"Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it."

"A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative."

"This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn't want them to lose friends. He is his family's hero."

"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience."

"No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections."

"Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school."