The way that social norms become social norms is not through any systematic process. It is through a flowering of an understanding within a culture.

Have you ever held a job that caused a body part to hurt at the end of the day? Because my feeling is, if you can't answer yes to that question, you are in big trouble in trying to understand the country you live in.

In 1960, it was still - no nostalgia here - an age when you could leave your door unlocked even in urban neighborhoods.

Well, do I think watching 35 hours of TV a week is a terrific thing to do? Not particularly. But do I think you're shutting yourself off from a lot of American culture if you are so completely isolated from what goes on, on popular TV? Yeah, you are!

The new upper class devotes incredible amounts of effort to raising their kids but that also includes incredible amounts of effort in getting their kids into the right preschool in some elite communities which I think is going a little bit too far.

When I'm talking about the white working class, here's what I'm defining: high school degree, no more, and working in a blue-collar job or a low-skilled service job. When I'm talking about the white, upper-middle class, I'm talking about people who work in the professions or managerial jobs and have at least a college degree.

We have a new lower class that's large and growing that has fallen away from a lot of the basic core behaviors and institutions that made America work, and we have a new upper class that's increasingly isolated from and ignorant of mainstream America.

This is what old guys do. They get dark and pessimistic.

By the end of writing 'Losing Ground,' I realized I was a libertarian.

A part of me always felt like an outsider and still does.

My whole career has been one wrong answer after another as far as the left is concerned.

If we want to jack up the tax rates on the really rich, the amounts of money that would bring in are trivial compared to jacking up rates on the middle class.

When America installs a minimum income, it's going to be doing it in a very different historical context than Switzerland or Sweden or Germany, or any other country might do it. And we're doing it in a context where it has the potential, I think, for much better consequences than in those other countries.

I want to keep the government out of the business of giving incentives to have or not have kids, or incentives to marry or not marry.

America's always been very good at providing help to people in need. It hasn't been perfect, but they've been very good at it.

I still want to find a way that leaves people free to live their lives without telling them what to do.

I am no longer a complete pariah in some academic quarters.

I did not want my children to grow up only knowing other upper-middle-class kids like themselves.

I love Europe, but I don't want America to become like Europe.

Whatever the Victorians did right in England, we need to resuscitate over here. In the late 19th century, the entire English population were propagandised into buying into a certain code of morals. I would be happy if we could emulate that in some way in America.

Ecumenical niceness is just pabulum.

There's a big difference between being good and being nice. Being good involves tough choices - tough love.

I want the new upper class to start preaching what it practices. They are getting married and staying married in large numbers. They work like crazy, long hours. They even do better going to church than lots of the rest of America. Why not just say, these are not just choices we have made for ourselves. These are rich, rewarding ways of living.

The people who run the country have enormous influence over the culture, politics, and the economics of the country. And increasingly, they haven't a clue about how most of America lives. They have never experienced it.