Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.

There's a flipside to this; if you as an individual have the right to live on your own terms, you must have the right to both succeed and fail on them.

Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars.

If there is a substantial difference between a gay couple and a childless heterosexual couple, I'm unable to see it.

So, we, as human beings, live in a very imprecise world. A world where our perceptions of reality are far more important than actual reality.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

There are, believe it or not, good politicians.

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.

Actors are good liars; writers are good liars with good memories.

It's your body and your life and you have an absolute right to do with it as you choose.

Well, the future of the Internet is... Reality.

You want to balance the budget in this country? We change the salary structure for Congress and the President. Every year they don't balance the budget, we don't pay them.

There's no way for me to know, but my best guess, as it must be for everyone, is that other people are pretty much like me.

The universe is not fair and it is never going to be fair.

To write well you must be willing to go naked into the world.

What the power structure is afraid of is that we're going to learn to recognize the truth when we hear it.

It's very strange writing science fiction in a world that moves as fast as ours does.

The welfare system in the United States is vile.

If a liberal political philosophy stands for anything, and I am no longer sure it does, then it must mean that we are committed to the leveling of the playing field for everyone.

The most interesting thing about the idea of money is that it makes it possible to measure something in previous ages we couldn't be sure about, and that something is power.

You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

There is virtually nothing I wouldn't be willing to do, to try and make sure that children have a fair shake in life.

The reason Ronald Reagan gets slammed for having so badly exacerbated the problem of deficit spending is that he so plainly deserves it.

The federal debt in this country is principally of Republican design.

As a fiscal conservative, I think that our government should pay for itself.

Our species is on the verge of changes that will fundamentally alter what it means to be human... and we are the people driving that change.

We are reinventing the world. We've set the ball spinning with little concern for where and how it's going to stop.

I'm a liberal where children are concerned, a libertarian where adults are concerned - and thinking very seriously about running for the House of Representatives, for whatever that's worth.

Police do not belong in war zones.

It's obvious, but perhaps worth saying, that happiness has virtually nothing to do with the state of your intellect.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

The generic Canadian style of illustration is different from the generic American style.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

All we're getting from the Democratic majority in Congress and from this White House is more bailouts, more spending, more planned stimulus, more deficits and debt, and the American people have had it.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It's at the point now where it's old.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.