"Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot."

"I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal."

"Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy."

"A 'farm' today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall."

"One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling."

"If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas."

"Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment."

"The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff."

"The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows."

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible."

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

"Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum."

"All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step."

"There are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency, and scoreless sports ties are boring."

"The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'"

"Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs."

"The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not just bad but sad."

"You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going."

"A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too."

"I blame feminism and Facebook for the death of the American automobile. I'm a Republican, so I blame everything on feminism - or commies."

"I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser. On his TV show, when he went to the home of the guy who invented the car alarm and set off all the car alarms on the block... pretty funny."

"Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them."

"You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going."

"If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult."

"I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom."

"Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is the family's practice as well as its theory. Even with today's scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree."

"Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there."

"Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy."

"My whole family can talk. They are all car salesmen. They are all funny."

"Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human."

"Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly."

"If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters."

"The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich."

"Considering what a hot, wed dog smells like, dog stew has a surprisingly savory odor To tell the truth, it tastes pretty good, like oxtail. To be perfectly honest, it's delicious. (Anything about this to my golden retriever, and I'll punch your lights out.)"

"I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements."

"If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult."

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

"Never fight an inanimate object."

"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."

"Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient."

"Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude."

"You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke."

"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope."

"In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character."

"Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy."

"Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper."

"Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there."

"The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to."

"Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution."

"I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a 'learning experience.' It makes me feel less stupid."