I said I didn't want to run for president. I didn't ask you to believe me.

A judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail.

We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.

Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right.

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

You want calamities? What about the Ice Age? God made this world, but didn't complete it.

I somehow got this reputation of diddling and dithering. I don't remember dithering at all.

Decide exactly what you want to achieve. Do you want to help people, or do you want to be powerful?

For too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.

The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us.

There are only two rules for being successful. One, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.

For me to make lasagna would be a desecration of a great Italian dish. . . . I don't mess with sacred things.

What I didn't do was pick one thing and keep saying it over and over again, so I could have gotten credit for it.

Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace and stimulation of drugs.

There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.

The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now - aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.

I told them that my grandfather had died in the Great Crash of 1929 - a stockbroker jumped out of a window and crushed him and his pushcart down below.

You will not be able to tell that they are capable of greatness until you provide them with a packed house, a 3-and-2 count and the game is on the line.

The mugger who is arrested is back on the street before the police officer, but the person mugged may not be back on the street for a long time, if ever.

The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty.

The values derived from religious belief will not - and should not - be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus.