If you control one house of Congress, you cannot abolish something like Obamacare, no matter how much pressure you apply.

In retrospect, the populist panic may have been overblown. Regarding Brexit, for example, the shock exaggerated its meaning. Because it was so unexpected, it became a sensation.

In the end, what brings civilizations down is when the elites lose confidence in the rightness of their cause.

I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation's destiny.

There was once a philosopher who said, 'I don't believe in God, but I fear him greatly.' That's about where I am.

Trump's relentless public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was clearly intended to get him to resign.

For every moment of triumph, there is an unequal and opposite feeling of despair. Take that iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over the prostrate, semiconscious wreckage of Sonny Liston. Great photo. Now think of Liston. Do the pleasure/pain calculus.

Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.

The way that Trump spoke about the outside world was the most aggressive, most hyper-nationalist, and in some ways most hostile of any inaugural address I think since the Second World War.

I don't think the West needs to apologize - or pay - for having invented the steam engine.