I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.
Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues.
You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.
The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.
Politicians will talk strategy and tactics and policies and programs until they're blue in the face, or you strangle them and they turn blue.
Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that they don't much care is, paradoxically, that they know a lot. That is, they know one important thing: there is no evidence that head lice transmit disease.
Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
Lack of romance is my real objection to writing on a computer.
I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.
Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.
Soccer matches should be something special, something people eagerly look forward to, something that brightens life.
As murderous industrial magnates go, Alfred Nobel is right up there with Ray Kroc, franchiser of McDonald's.
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.
Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.
Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.
No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots.
Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.
Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.
After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He's still here in the United States.
I understand Twitter has become popular among politicians. This technology allows them to stay in perpetual contact with their constituents. The electorate now has instant information about what politicians have been up to.
Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers.
If I were a congressman who had voted for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, I'd claim it was forced on our country by a sinister international organization.
Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.
Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it.
Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.
Our regulatory bodies strive to create honest dealings, fair trades, and a situation in which no one has an advantage over anyone else. But human beings aren't honest. And all trades are made because one person thinks he's getting the better of the other, and the other person thinks the same.
When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me - when I was an 8-year-old. They're in shorts and T-shirts. And it's not just on airplanes. It's in business offices, teachers' lounges, and churches.
I don't think anybody's really been successful with theorizing about value or creating a price theory.