In the Soviet Union, no industry went under until they all did.

There's one more terrifying fact about old people: I'm going to be one soon.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.

Liberals want to live downtown. All over America - in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Georgetown - there are crowds of liberals living in the gritty, ugly, dirty neighborhoods sensible people are trying to flee.

In a free country, government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference.

Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes - the whole bag of tricks.

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay.

If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words 'I don't know.'

President Obama has contempt for real money.

You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.

Simply because something is a populist movement doesn't make it either good or bad.

I think every high school student who was alert during the early '60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.

A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.

Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.

Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it's got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It's not pretty. But it's striking, I'll give it that. It's not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.

Are you a Democrat because you're a union member? Then why, after eight years of Bill Clinton, does some Chinese guy in Guangdong province have your job?

Guns are the ultimate bulwark against government misbehavior.

Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.

The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren't carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.

I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.

There is no 20-year period in American history when stocks lost money.

If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters.

The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows.

There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.

The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry - knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission.

I think the Baby Boom has enjoyed itself, maybe sometimes a little too much, and we're continuing to enjoy ourselves, maybe a little too much.

The world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats.

Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.

People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today,' and I'm thinking... '1861, that was polarized.'

Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.

The good thing about SUVs is they have storage.

Just because a subject is serious doesn't mean it doesn't have plenty of absurdities.

The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.

Now, do I think the baby boomers tend to be self-absorbed? I do.

Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

One of the few benefits of being a journalist is that you're not in the Army.

I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.

The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'

Inside every Sancho Panza there's a Don Quixote struggling to get out.

It's better to make fun of yourself because you've always got someone around to make fun of, and they can't sue you.

Jeans fit the mature male one of two ways, both dirigible in nature. You make a public impression that's either Hindenburg or Goodyear blimp.

The foundation of collectivism is simple: There should be no important economic differences among people. No one should be too rich.

Of course, no one wants to ban the vote. Voting should remain available for sporting and recreational purposes. But certain types of votes clearly should be curtailed - 'assault votes,' for example, in which the only purpose of the vote is to harm others.

Why is Iraq so easy to harm and so hard to help?

I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.