Everybody in America is soft and hates conflict. The cure for this both in politics and social life is the same - hardihood. Give them raw truth.

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out do not vote or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

In politics every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

In every country today there is politics. It may be authoritarian politics but there is politics.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe and which mean very little.

I can't let important policy decisions hinge on the fact that an election is coming up every 90 days.

Your every voter as surely as your chief magistrate exercises a public trust.

The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it but somebody always does.

I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

No what I should really like to do right now in the full blaze of lights before this illustrious assembly is to shower every one of you with gifts with flowers with offerings of poetry - to be young once more to ride on the crest of the wave.

At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine so we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature poetry... stuff that we like. It's fun.

The irony is going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

Once every five hundred years or so a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language though so I am always aware of every word's meaning or multiple meanings.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers their trying their hand at poetry.