When the chemistry is right, all the experiments work.
Man is a political animal by nature; he is a scientist by chance or choice; he is a moralist because he is a man.
Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.
The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil.
Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.
Power positions do not yield to arguments, however rationally and morally valid, but only to superior power.
When we speak of power, we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large.
Plenty of crazy people in New York. There are so many crazy people here, I think it's like one out of every one person is completely out of their mind.
Rehabilitation is such a tiny part of prison life, and I think that has to change. The funny thing is that there's even bi-partisan agreement that it has to change, but the question is how. I don't know how.
All art is exploitation.
We actually created Twitter and Odeo at the same time. When we realized we didn't really want to be running Odeo anymore we looked around for anyone who wanted to buy Odeo, but not acquire us as a technology. But people aren't as interested in that.