In the end of five years I made supplication to the king to go out of this land, desiring to see my poor wife and children according to conscience and nature.

So in process of four or five years the emperor called me, as divers times he had done before.

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

For over 30 years, the IRA showed that the British government could not rule Ireland on its own terms.

Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead center of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.

These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

In the past few years I have begun the process of becoming a new man.

Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

It's hard for young players to see the big picture. They just see three or four years down the road.

I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.

It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.