An iron law of avant-garde art is that theorizing expands to fill a void of talent.

Astrological gibberish, which means astrology generally, has no place in a newspaper, let alone government. Unlike comics, which are part of a newspaper's harmless pleasure and make no truth claims, astrology is a fraud. The idea that it gets a hearing in government is dismaying.

Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.

Complete absorption in the present is both a cause and a consequence of living a precarious and disorganized life.

Economics is a science of single instances, hence it is hardly a science. So how much the president's most recent tax cuts will stimulate the economy is conjectural, a conjecture being a guess by a Ph.D.

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word National.

Inebriated by self-approval, the UN is grounded in neither democratic consent nor territorial responsibilities, nor independent fiscal means, nor the material means of enforcing its judgments.

Liberals, you see, embrace liberalism for an obvious and uncomplicated reason -- liberalism is self-evidently true. But conservatives embrace conservatism for reasons that must be excavated from their inner turmoils, many of them pitiable or disreputable.

Part of the beauty and much of the moral seriousness of sport derives from the severe justice of strenuous play in a circumscribed universe of rules that protect the integrity of competition. Records are worth recording, and worth striving to surpass, because they serve as benchmarks of excellence achieved under the pressure of competition.

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

Secrecy renders societies susceptible to epidemics of suspicion.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

The phrase "domestic cat" is an oxymoron.