It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

I am not a televangelist.

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as ‚failed states.‘

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

There’s one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and – I’m going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself – I think most respect me.

When we have the ball, the other team has to run. The most important thing is for the players to be prepared to be a little bit wild.

Dissents speak to a future age.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

History, a distillation of rumour.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

Politically there were failures. And also on the personal level, there were tremendous failures.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.