Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-workers and so on, but actually hate the job they do.

A penny will not buy a penny postcard or a penny whistle or a single piece of penny candy. It will not even, if you're managing the U.S. Mint, buy a penny.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

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.

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?

Globalization is simply opening the free marketplace to encompass the entire world.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in the valley of the River Exe would be gone. The handsome agricultural landscape of which the British are so proud, carefully husbanded since Boudicca's day, would be replaced by natural growth. The most likely growth is real-estate developments.

Bill Clinton is not a hypocrite. If a man believes that it is just and moral to redistribute wealth, there is nothing hypocritical in his attempts to redistribute some of that wealth to himself.

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.

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

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.