"The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity."

"I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred - that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt."

"Human nature is above all things—lazy."

"Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong."

"It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done."

"Most mothers are instinctive philosophers."

"Friendships are discovered rather than made."

"I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place."

"I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation."

"Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn"

"The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today."

"I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist."

"To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization."

"WHAT DO WE WANT?! PATIENCE! WHEN DO WE WANT IT?! NOW!"

"Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from."

"The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover."

"Too many people don't protect their smartphones with a password or PIN. I anticipate that Apple's fingerprint reader will in fact make iPhone 5S owners more likely to secure their smartphones."

"In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor."

"Service dogs raise their masters' sense of well-being."

"Veterans report that service dogs help break their isolation. People will often avert their eyes when they see a wounded veteran. But when the veteran has a dog, the same people will come up and say, 'Hi' to pet the dog and then strike up a conversation."

"The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy. But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we're getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem."

"National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account."

"It's hard to have that debate around secret programs authorized by secret legal opinions issued by a secret court. Actually, it's impossible to have that debate."

"I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book."

"When you live in New York, one of two things happen - you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from."

"I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for."

"Gary Bauer is a very good - he's a good friend of mine."

"When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both."

"I get satisfaction when I write something I like, when I'm happy with it."

"The Minnesotans I talk to are really concerned about what the future holds for their families. They're trying to pay for health care and send their kids to college, they're worried about declining home values, they're scared for a loved one they have serving in Iraq."

"We owe an historic debt to American Indians. They have a unique set of concerns that haven't been addressed, and I'd like to stand with them. Also, I'd like to get their views on immigration."

"I'm sure I've devoted enough thought to Rush Limbaugh for one lifetime."

"I believe in not attacking a country pre-emptively unless you're sure of what you're doing and you're working with allies."

"At 'SNL,' I wrote political stuff, but I never felt the show should have an axe to grind. But when I left in '95, I could let my own beliefs out."

"I believe people have a right to know what's going on with their information and how it's collected, how it's stored and who gets it."

"Google's screen for privacy settings does give you more options for what you share than Apple's does. But it's not a complete list, and people aren't aware of whether or not that information will go to a third party."

"When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms."

"When the Constitution was written, the founders had no way of anticipating the new technologies that would evolve in the coming centuries."

"Technology is an incredible tool - it connects people to each other, creates jobs all over the world, and makes life easier for millions of Americans."

"Today I will masterbate! Okay, that was a mistake. I should have written "Today I will masterbate--if I want to!"

"I think that the default for collecting any kind of personal data should be opt-in consent."

"I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens."

"Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from"

"Anybody who deliberately propagandizes with lies should be held up to scorn and ridicule."

"It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world."

"Liberals like me love America. We just love America in a different way."

"When the president during the campaign said he was against nation building, I didn't realize he meant our nation."

"Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world."

"I'm for Israel's right to exist."

"Demagoguery sells. And therefore, radio stations will put it on. But that doesn't mean that you can't do something else and also make it sell."