Jim Reston: Walking through the crowds of air-kissing politicians, actors and high fliers, it was tough to tell where the politics stopped and the showbiz started. Maybe, in the end, there is no difference.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.

The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country.

They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.—written for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755

These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.

I had a dream about you. You were storing my brain in a pickle jar in the fridge, and I only discovered it when I went to garnish my hamburger. Mindless and hungry, I was a US politician’s ideal voter.

I want to write a book called Kissing Kissinger. It won’t be about kissing, Kissinger, or even politics. It’ll be about radiator fluid, and all the health benefits you can enjoy from chugging it.

If the price I have to pay to see Jewish children playing without an armed escort are freeways across the desert and a take-a-way on every street corner throughout the Middle East, then I’m all for it.

Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here's one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.

When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels run out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.

One of the most damaging myths of our time is that poor countries live in poverty because of a conspiracy of the rich countries, who arrange things so as to keep them underdeveloped, in order to exploit them.

The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them..

I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.

Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.

To succeed in public life nothing is as important as the skill for unclear speech No one will know what you mean and that really helps Chief Economist to the World Bank on maintaining a successful public image