“Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.”

“Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them,...”

“I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, ...”

“These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.WaitTexas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the ...”

“The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that t...”

“[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite.”

“Thinking is the hardest work anyone can do, which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. ”

“Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.”

“I could not think without writing.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”