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"Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars."
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"I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn't like to bring that up to Mitch."
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Personal Development
"Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars."
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Personal Development
"Well, as I was saying... everyone's so nice to me, usually."
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Personal Development
"Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out."
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Personal Development
"If somebody's pointing a trembling finger at your pants and saying you shouldn't be doing that, follow that finger back, go up the arm and look at the head that's behind it, because there's almost always something fairly woolly in there."
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Personal Development
"At least when it's in French, I won't know what the heck they're saying."
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Personal Development
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted."
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"When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as "Catch-22" I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?""
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Personal Development
"When Howard Dean started saying some honest things, they hung him."
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"I have to say that when I was young, when any politician was talking I wasn't even interested. Maybe they were saying some nice stuff, but then if you put Michael Jordan on TV, I was interested!"
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"What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?"
Politics
"Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine-some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone-but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him."
Reality
"I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit."
Humility
"What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime."
Justice
"It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse."
Humor
"Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy."
Culture
"Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact."
Security
"Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen."
Criticism
"Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political."
Debate
"A little later, the Apollo mission was consummated and there were Americans on the moon. I remember distinctly looking up from the quad on what was quite a moon-flooded night, and thinking about it. They made it! The Stars and Stripes are finally flown on another orb! Also, English becomes the first and only language spoken on a neighboring rock! Who could forbear to cheer? Still, the experience was poisoned for me by having to watch Richard Nixon smirking as he babbled to the lunar-nauts by some closed-circuit link. Was even the silvery orb to be tainted by the base, earthbound reality of imperialism?"
History
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