The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.

You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie but if you have plans for a war in Iraq and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.

I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial but if ever I should it will then be known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth.

It's essential to tell the truth at all times. This will reduce life's pain. Lying distorts reality. All forms of distorted thinking must be corrected.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

Laboratories can reduce risk by implementing a proven and internationally accepted quality assurance technology that is applicable across the globe.

The demographic weight of countries such as China and India exercise a massive pressure on our wages and salaries. They have accomplished massive technological advances and the revolution in information technology has reduced the costs of transport.

Gates is the ultimate programming machine. He believes everything can be defined examined reduced to essentials and rearranged into a logical sequence that will achieve a particular goal.

All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.

If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

With respect to the respective French and German traditions you are no doubt correct although I am reluctant to see individual achievement reduced to archetypes.

I think we need to significantly reduce the regulatory burden on the private sector. The Obama administration is doing the opposite. They're loading on more and more regulation on the private respect to how the economy functions.

Actually I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

In the grip of a neurological disorder I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power.

The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival who will reduce their profits so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power.

We can play politics or we can reduce crime.

It is the belief that extremes and excesses of inequality must be reduced so that each person is free to fully develop his or her full potential. This is why we take precious time out of our lives and give it to politics.

I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life.

However if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence there can't be much to it.

Well I think it has always been a mistake to reduce the peace process in Ireland to a decommissioning process.