Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

In a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

I love food.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

Those places I don’t understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

I love trying out different cuisines. In Delhi, I love Megu at the Leela, and TK’s at the Hyatt. I also enjoy Khan Chacha’s rolls. In Mumbai, it’s Royal China and Shiro. And in Bangalore, I like the food at Bricklane.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.

America is just downright mean.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.