It is unfortunate we were put in the position where the Republicans made it clear they were ready to let everything fall unless they got these tax cuts.
Every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.
Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
Special mercy arouses more gratitude than universal mercy.
Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one's balance in spite of them.
In the 1960s, Robert Venturi and I played a game we called ‘I can like something worse than you can like. ’
I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more.