Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

I'm a novelist, a critic, an essayist - I tend to see politics as a subset of cultures rather than the other way around. It's a human enterprise, a tool or a technology revealing our collective inner self.

America needs a president who knows how we live and work, who delivers on promises to those who need help, who won't use fear and hate as a political cudgel, and who works to solve our biggest problems instead of nibbling around the edges - a president who will go big, be bold, and do good, and stirs all Americans to do likewise.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

Clinton's successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.