American Journalist Quotes

At its heart, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation, and the conversation begins at birth.

Disease may score a direct hit on only one member of a family, but shrapnel tears the flesh of the others.

Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche. This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.

Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.

The base of biography has to be facts.

You can't adopt politics as a profession, and remain honest.

The only way to escape one's fate is to enjoy it.

How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

The small library in my Cleveland-area day school was merely a gateway drug to the local public library a mile from my home. I spent innumerable hours there as a boy, addicted as much to the serendipitous pleasures of searching for a good book as to the satisfying relish of losing myself in its pages once I found one.

Jeff Jacoby (columnist)

There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

A profile, a look, a voice, can capture a heart in no time at all.

A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.

Sheldon Vanauken

Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

The State, in short, subjects people, whereas Society associates them voluntarily.

If we're going to start calling out religious and political groups for extremism, we could start at home with Republicans. Too many of them spew animus. Too many foment sectarianism. Too many sit by, or make excuses, as others appeal to tribalism. If Obama were to treat them the way they say he should treat Islam — holding the entire faith accountable for its ugliest followers — they'd squeal nonstop about slander and demagogy. They're lucky that's not his style.

William Saletan

The reality is that you're entitled to believe what you want as long as you're not imposing your beliefs on other people.... I don't think [atheists] need to shut up. The reason why I don't think they need to shut up is because there's a whole bunch of people in this world that we can look at and say they need to shut up and they certainly don't. You got everybody fighting for their own individual cause. This is their cause. We might not like it. I don't agree with it at all, but they do have a right.

Stephen A. Smith

Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.)

Charles Krauthammer

There is nothing like a man for bringing out the animal in an animal.

Roger Rosenblatt

A human being is a very social creature, and ninety percent of what he does is done only because other people are watching. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?

Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.

Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her-hadn't even wanted her, truthfully-but there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world.

Cathleen Falsani

The truth about not having everything you need, not being fully equipped or qualified or allowed is that these limits are the nebula of creative genius. When you have total freedom i.e: no limits at all. You stop trying to make the best of things

Augusten Burroughs

Pierre Trudeau was too much of a professional politician to be described as a good man, nor, it can be argued despite much pubilicity to the contrary, was he a particularly clever or even wise one. But he was a great man, perhaps the gratest Canada has produced in this century.