Illegitimacy is important for the socialisation of little girls and especially little boys. If you have large numbers of young men growing up who never see an adult male doing the ordinary things men do, then you get chaos. This is not a moral statement, it's an empirical statement.

Hardly anybody realizes that the first couple of chapters of 'Coming Apart' were basically a recapitulation of the argument in 'The Bell Curve.' That's how little people focused on 'The Bell Curve's' real message.

More humility, in terms of recognizing our luck, and more realism, in understanding at a deep level that being smart doesn't make you good, doesn't make you valuable, doesn't make you wise.

Intelligence seems to blossom in the barest ground.

The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.

Top-down government programs threaten to limit the freedom and opportunity that made this country great.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'

For all our current troubles, Americans are still the hardest working, most innovative people on the face of the earth. By trusting the American people, instead of government, we'll continue to surprise and inspire the world.