Quote

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts - I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions.

You often see in Washington those who disagree you described as stupid or evil. It's one of the most unfortunate trends of modern political discourse. Portraying opponents as too dumb to know the truth but smart enough and wanting people to suffer.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.

If you tell the truth you get into trouble, and that's why politicians are extremely dull.

My close proximity to many of the newsmakers can give me a different perspective about people in politics and what they might say than others who don't know them.

I know that sometimes politics creates situations in which people want to say particular things for political reasons.

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.