Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.

Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.

For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.

We want a system that will improve consistency and steadiness in the quality of government.

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.

What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it.

America slept because most Americans preferred it that way.

No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical, what it can and must be is generally accepted as both fair and usable.

I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.

In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor.

Of course great politicians are always liable to be wrong about something, and the more people tell them they are wrong, the more stubbornly they defend their error.

Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build.

All the research shows that being married, with all its ups and downs, is by far the most effective way of making young men law-abiding and giving them a sense of purpose and self-worth.

It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written.

For the first half of this century, High Court judges have been cautious to the point of timidity in expressing any criticism of governmental action; the independence of the judiciary has been of a decidedly subordinate character.

Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family.

I'm positive and I smile a lot, and I'm kind of a banana, but serious work just seems to find me, so I'm not going to argue with it.

There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn't save those institutions from making terrible decisions.

I will say I remember the best thing in terms of publicity was being on the cover of Newsweek.

Even though mother's issues are not front page news, they touch us all personally, some more than others, and I believe passionately in the power of grassroots engagement.

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.

Overcome your barriers, intend the best, and be patient. You will enjoy more balance, more growth, more income, and more fun!

I have empathy; I am humane. I understand human misery.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility.

I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, 'Ah yes, they good.' Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way.

Psychology is as important as substance. If you treat people with respect, they will go out of their way to accommodate you. If you treat them in a patronizing way, they will go out of their way to make your life difficult.

We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love one another.

Rejection just motivates me to keep trying and to try to do better.

'The Talk-Funny Girl' opens with a glum picture of a desperately poor rural New England family. Poverty has so brutalized the family that the ordinary laws and rules governing humanity have eroded, turning systems of behavior upside down.

A suit is just a suit: a practical garment, not a ceremonial robe; it can be worn out to dinner with friends or for a visit to an art gallery. Its beauty and craftsmanship are utterly wasted if you think of it as something magical and symbolic.

I always remember that I am a representative of my country, and I always think about the culture I'm bringing to people.

The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.

Although separating mitochondria and microsomes might appear worlds apart from the determination of the molecular weight of macromolecules, certain concepts were common to the two operations and could be usefully transposed from the latter to the former.

I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war.

Pop has to exist and it's a great thing.

For the Scottish government, the practice of having meetings in different parts of the country is well established, but for the U.K. government, it is a much rarer event.

I have my head screwed on right. I haven't been this way in a long time.

No matter how young you are, you're too old for SXSW.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

I enjoy getting to work on 'Saturday Night Live', where I get to do people like David Paterson. And then, its like a different muscle to do someone like a bicycle guy on' Portlandia'.