Is there any possibility of giving international air travel, which we all need and use and hate, a touch of glamour, or even of reliable, soulless efficiency? I suspect future historians will puzzle over our failure. But by then, of course, we shall be in the age of mass space travel, with its fresh and unimaginable crop of horrors.

In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence.

The planet Earth, though not threatened with destruction by man-made global warming, is by no means indestructible. There are many unpredictable events within our solar system, and still more outside it, that could make Earth uninhabitable by humans.

In the long term, it is desirable that the human race, faced with the prospect of extinction on Earth, should prepare an escape route for itself to another inhabitable planet.

I don't want the United States to be in a global economy where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. We can't necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries.

In my early formative years, back in the territory days, if a guy didn't get along for whatever reason or didn't get over or things didn't work out, or he just wanted to relocate, he had other territories to go to to make, if not the same amount of money, substantially more or less.

Why is the N.F.L. so popular? The N.F.L. grew in the comfort zone after World War II. People had money and time. A popular American sport got bigger.

The Fed's organization reflects a long-standing desire in American history to ensure that power over our nation's monetary policy and financial system is not concentrated in a few hands, whether in Washington or in high finance or in any single group or constituency.